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\ 


THE EDDY 


H Kooet ot <To=day 

BY 

CLARENCE L. CULLEN 



Illustrations by 
CH. WEBER DITZLER 


G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY 


PUBLISHERS 


NEW YORK 




Copyright , 19 10, By 
G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY 


Tht Eddy 


C'C! AS597B4 


CONTENTS 


I 

II 

III 

IV 
V 

VI 

VII 
VIII 

IX 

X 
XI 

XII 

XIII 

XIV 
XV, 

XVI 


PAGE 

7 

3i 

55 

77 

102 

125 

i45 

169 

195 

218 

237 

257 

281 

305 

326 

348 



ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGB 

Louise Frontispiece 

Laura, a woman of thirty-five, had the slender yet well- 

rounded structural sinuosities of a girl of twenty . 20 

He’d go over to the house on the drive and get the 

thing over with 182 

“ But, why did you never tell me, mother ?” . . 192 

He squeaked like a rat; then he went down like a log. 324 


Uki It 


THE EDDY 


CHAPTER I 

I F only she were a boy!” 

Mrs. Treharne almost moaned the words. 
She tugged nervously at her absurdly diapha- 
nous boudoir jacket, vainly attempting to fasten 
it with fluttering, uncontrolled fingers; and she 
shuddered, though her dressing-room was over- 
warm. 

Heloise, who was doing her hair, juggled and 
then dropped a flaming red coronet braid upon 
the rug. The maid, a thin-lipped young woman 
with a jutting jaw and an implacable eye, panto- 
mimed her annoyance. Before picking up the 
braid she glued the backs of her hands to her 
smoothly-lathed hips. Mrs. Treharne, in the 
glass, could see Heloise’s drab-filmed grey-blue 
eyes darting sparks. 

“I shall resume,” croaked the maid in raucous 
French, “when Madame is through writhing and 
wriggling and squirming.” 

Laura Stedham — she was relaxing luxuriously 
in the depths of a chair that fitted her almost as 
perfectly as her gown — smiled a bit wickedly. 


8 


THE EDDY 


“Forgive me if I seem catty, Tony,” said 
Laura in her assuaging contralto, “but it is such 
a delight to find that there is some one else who 
is bullied by her maid. Mine positively tyran- 
nizes over me.” 

“Oh, everybody bullies me,” said Mrs. Tre- 
harne, querulously, holding herself rigid in order 
not to again draw Heloise’s wrath. “Everybody 
seems to find it a sort of diversion, a game, to 
browbeat and hector and bully-rag me.” 

“Surely I don’t, afflicted one — do I?” Laura 
tacked a little rippling laugh to the question. 

“You do worse, my dear — you laugh at me,” 
plaintively replied the fading woman huddled be- 
fore the glass. She was haggard as from a 
trouble that has been unsuccessfully slept upon, 
and her mouth — not yet made into a crimson bow 
through Heloise’s deft artistry — was drawn with 
discontent. “Heaven on high, if only she were 
a boy!” she broke out petulantly again, after a 
little pause. 

This time there was genuine enjoyment in 
Laura’s laugh. 

“Don’t scowl, Antoinette — I know I am a beast 
for laughing,” she said, abandoning her chair and 
lissomely crossing the room to glance at some new 
photographs on a mantel. “But, really, you say 
that so often that it sounds like the refrain to a 
topical song. ‘If only she were a boy — If only 


THE EDDY 


9 


she were a boy!’ — don’t you catch the rythm of 
it? I wonder, Tony, how many times I have 
heard you give utterance to that phrase during 
the past few years — just?” 

“You haven’t heard me say it any oftener than 
I’ve meant it, my dear — be very sure of that,” 
said Mrs. Treharne, without a sympton of a 
smile. Her sense of humor was embryonic, and 
Laura’s laughter and words, obviously meant 
merely in mitigation, jarred upon her. “And a 
remark is none the less true for being repeated, 
is it?” she went on in her plaintive monotone. “I 
do wish Louise had been born a boy. You would, 
too, if you were in my place. You know you 
would.” 

“But, dear Tony, it is such a futile, such a 
dreadfully childish wish,” said Laura, striving to 
erase the smile from her face. “It is like wish- 
ing for the fairy prince, or the magic carpet, or 
the end of the rainbow. Worry makes wrinkles, 
dear. That may sound bromidic, but it’s true. 
Why worry yourself through all the years with 
wishing so impossible — I was going to say so in- 
sane — a wish? Not only that — forgive me for 
saying it, dear, won’t you? — but it is rather a gris- 
ly wish, too; and so unfair to the girl, really. 
Don’t you think — don’t you know — that it is?” 

“Don’t scold, Laura — please,” said Mrs. Tre- 
harne, almost in a whimper. “You don’t know 


10 


THE EDDY 


what a miserable mess I am in. You haven’t 
given me time to tell you. Louise is coming home 
immediately.” 

“For the holidays, naturally,” said Laura. 
“Why shouldn’t the poor child come home for 
the holidays? It will be the first time she has 
had her holidays at home since she went away to 
school — nearly four years, I think — isn’t it?” 

“I hope you are not meaning that for a re- 
proach,” accused the haggard lady, now being 
corseted by the lusty-armed Heloise. “You are 
in a shocking humor today; and I did so depend 
upon you for advice and comfort, if not consola- 
tion, when I ’phoned you to come over.” 

“Oh, I am in a lark’s humor,” protested Laura, 
smiling as she rested a gloved hand upon one of 
the milky shoulders of her troubled friend. “But 
you puzzle me. Why should you make such a 
catastrophe of it, such a veritable cataclysm, be- 
cause your pretty and agreeable and, as I recall 
her, quite lovable daughter announces that she is 
coming home for the holidays? Enlighten me, 
dear. I seem not to discern the point of your 
problem.” 

“Problem isn’t the word for it!” repined the 
unhappy lady, upon whose nearly knee-length 
stays Heloise now was tugging like a sailor at a 
capstan. “Louise coolly announces — I had her 
letter yesterday — that she is not returning to Miss 


THE EDDY 


11 


Mayhew’s school; that she is coming to remain 
with me for good.” 

“Well?” said Laura, murdering the smile that 
strove to break through her visible mask. 

“ ‘Well?’ ” wailed Mrs. Treharne. “Is that all 
you have to say — ‘well’ ? Can’t you see how impos- 
sible, how utterly out of the question, how ” 

“Her quitting school now, you mean?” said 
Laura. “Really, I think you should be pleased. 
Her announcement shows that Louise is a woman 
— a girl of nineteen who has spent nearly four 
years at a modern finishing school no longer is a 
young person, but a woman — that she is a woman 
with a sense of humor. It is very human, very 
indicative of the possession of the humorous 
sense, to tire of school. I did that, myself, a full 
year before I was through. All of the king’s 
horses could not have dragged me back, either. 
I hated the thought of graduation day — the fool- 
ish, fluttery white frocks, the platitudes of visit- 
ors, the moisty weepiness of one’s women rela- 
tives, the sophomoric speechifying of girls who 
were hoydens the day before and would be worse 
hoydens the day after, the showing off of one’s 
petty, inconsequental ‘accomplishments’ — I loathed 
the thought of the whole fatuous performance. 
And so I packed and left a full year in advance 
of it, resolved not to be involuntarily drawn into 
the solemn extravaganza of ‘being graduated.’ 


12 


THE EDDY 


That, no doubt, is Louise’s idea. She is a girl 
with a merry heart. You should be glad of that, 
Antoinette.” 

Laura was simply sparring with the hope of 
getting her friend’s mind off her problem. She 
knew very well the nature of the problem; none 
better. The idea of a girl just out of school 
being plumped into such an environment as that 
enveloping the Treharne household perhaps was 
even more unthinkable to Laura that it was to the 
girl’s mother, a woman who had permitted her 
sensibilities to become grievously blunted with 
what she termed the “widening of her horizon.” 
But Laura, not yet ready with advice to meet so 
ticklish a situation, sought, woma-n-like, to divert 
the point of the problem by seizing upon one of 
its quite minor ramifications. Of course it was 
not her fault that she failed. 

“Laura,” said Mrs. Treharne, dismissing her 
maid with a gesture and fumblingly assembling 
the materials on her dressing table wherewith to 
accomplish an unassisted facial make-up, “your 
occasional assumption of stupidity is the least be- 
coming thing you do. Why fence with me? It 
is ridiculous, unfriendly, irritating.” She daubed 
at her pale wispy eyebrows with a smeary pencil 
and added with a certain hardness: “You know 
perfectly well why I dread the thought of Louise 
coming here.” 


THE EDDY 


IB 


Laura, at bay, unready for a pronouncement, 
took another ditch of evasiveness. 

“I wonder/’ she said in an intended tone of 
detachment, “if you are afraid she has become 
a bluestocking? Or maybe a frump? Or, worse 
still, what you call one of the anointed smugs? 
Such things — one or other of them, at any rate — 
are to be expected of girls just out of school, my 
dear. Louise will conquer her disqualification, 
if she have one. Her imagination will do that 
much for her. And of course she has imagina- 
tion.” 

“She has eyes, too, no doubt,” said Mrs. Tre- 
harne, drily. “And you know how prying, pene- 
trating the eyes of a girl of nineteen are. You 
know still better how poorly this — this menage of 
mine can stand such inspection; the snooping — 
wholly natural snooping, I grant you — of a 
daughter nearly a head taller than I am, whom, 
nevertheless, I scarcely know. Frankly, I don’t 
know Louise at all. I should be properly 
ashamed to acknowledge that; possibly I am. 
Moreover, I believe I am a bit afraid of her.” 

Laura assumed a musing posture and thus had 
an excuse for remaining silent. 

“Additionally,” went on Mrs. Treharne, a 
little hoarsely, “a woman, in considering her 
daughter’s welfare, must become a trifle smug 
herself, no matter how much she may despise 


14 


THE EDDY 


smugness in its general use and application. What 
sort of a place is this as a home for Louise? I 
am speaking to you as an old friend. I am in a 
fiendish predicament. Of course you see that. 
And I can’t see the first step of a way out of it. 
Can you?” 

“For one thing,” said Laura, mischievously and 
with eyes a-twinkle, “you might permanently dis- 
perse your zoo.” 

Mrs. Treharne laughed harshly. 

“One must know somebody,” she said, deftly 
applying the rouge rabbit’s-foot. “One can’t live 
in a cave. My own sort banished me. I am de - 
classee. Shall I sit and twiddle my thumbs? At 
least the people of my ‘zoo,’ as you call it, are 
clever. You’ll own that.” 

“They are freaks — impossible, buffoonish, ba- 
boonish freaks,” replied Laura, more earnesdy 
than she had yet spoken. “You know I am not 
finicial; but if this raffish crew of yours are ‘Bohe- 
mians,’ as they declare themselves to be — which 
in itself is banal enough, isn’t it? — then give me 
the sleek, smug inhabitants of Spotless Town!” 

“You rave,” said Mrs. Treharne, drearily. 
“Let my zoo-crew alone. We don’t agree upon 
the point.” 

“I thought you had your queer people— your 
extraordinary Sunday evening parties — I came 
perilously near saying rough-houses, Tony — in 


THE EDDY 


15 


mind in bemoaning Louise’s return home,” said 
Laura, yawning ever so slightly. 

“Oh, I’d thought of that, of course,” said Mrs. 
Treharne, artistically adding a sixteenth of an 
inch of length to the corners of her eyes with the 
pencil. “But my raffish crew, as you call them, 
wouldn’t harm her. She might even become used 
to them in time. She hasn’t had time to form 
prejudices yet, it is to be hoped. You purposely 
hit all around the real mark. Louise is nineteen. 
And you know the uncanny side-lines of wisdom 
girls pick up at finishing schools nowadays. Since 
you maliciously force me to mention it point- 
blank, in Heaven’s name what will this daughter 
of mine think of — of Mr. Judd?” 

“Now we are at the heart of the matter,” an- 
swered Laura. “Heart, did I say? Fancy 
‘Pudge’ with a heart 1” There was little mirth in 
her laugh. 

“You must not call him that, even when you 
are alone with me, Laura,” said Mrs. Treharne, 
petulantly. “I am in deadly fear that some time 
or other he will catch you calling him that. You 
know how mortally sensitive he is about his — his 
bulk.” 

“Well might he be,” said Laura, drily enough. 
“Is there any particular reason why your daugh- 
ter should have to meet Judd? Except very oc- 
casionally, I mean?” 


16 


THE EDDY 


“How can it be avoided ?” asked Mrs. Tre- 
harne, helplessly. “Hasn’t he the run of the 
house? You don’t for an instant suppose that, 
even if I implored him, he would forego any of 
his— his privileges here?” 

“I am not so imbecile as to suppose any such a 
thing,” said Laura, with a certain asperity. “But 
the man might exhibit a bit of common decency. 
He knows that Louise is coming?” 

“I haven’t told him,” said Mrs. Treharne, flut- 
tering to her feet from the dressing table. “You 
will hook me, Laura ? I don’t want to call Helo- 
ise. She only pretends that she doesn’t under- 
stand English, and she knows too much already. 
No, I haven’t told him yet. He resents the idea 
of my having a daughter, you know. He will be 
here directly to take me out in the car. I shall 
tell him when we are going through the Park. 
Then nobody but the chauffeur and I will hear 
him growl. I know in advance every word that 
he will say,” and the distraught woman looked 
wan even under her liberal rouge. 

Laura impulsively placed an arm around her 
friend’s shoulder. 

“Tony,” she said, gravely, “why don’t you 
show the brute the door?” 

“Because it is his own door — you know that,” 
said Mrs. Treharne, her eyes a little misty. 

“Then walk out of it,” said Laura. “This isn’t 


THE EDDY 


17 


the right sort of thing. I don’t pose as a saint. 
But I could not endure this. Come with me. Let 
Louise join you with me. You know how wel- 
come you are. I have plenty — more than plenty. 
You shouldn’t have permitted Judd to refuse to 
let you continue to receive the allowance George 
Treharne provided for Louise. That wasn’t fair 
to yourself. It was more unfair to your daugh- 
ter. You shouldn’t have allowed her to get her 
education with Judd’s money. She is bound to 
find it out. She would be no woman at all if that 
knowledge doesn’t cut her to the quick. But this 
is beside the mark. I have plenty. She is a dear, 
sweet, honest girl, and she is entitled to her chance 
in the world. I am sure I don’t need to tell you 
that. What chance has she in this house? The 
doors that are worth while are closed to you, my 
dear. You know I say that with no unkind intent. 
It is something you yourself acknowledge. The 
same doors would be closed to your daughter if 
she came here. She could and would do so much 
better with me. Neither you nor she would be 
dependent. We are too old friends for that. 
And I know George Treharne. He would renew 
the allowance that you permitted Judd to thrust 
back at him through yourself and his lawyer. 
Leave this place, this sort of thing, once and for- 
ever. I want you to — for your own sake and your 
daughter’s. ” 


18 


THE EDDY 


Mrs. Treharne wept dismally, to the sad de- 
rangement of her elaborately-applied make-up. 
But she wept the tears of self-pity, than which 
there are none more pitiful. The reins of a great 
chance, for herself and her daughter, were in her 
hands. Perhaps it was the intensity of her per- 
tubation that did not permit her to hold them. 
Very likely it was something else. But, at any 
rate, hold them she did not. 

“You are a dear, Laura,” she said, fighting 
back her tears for the sake of her make-up. “It 
was what I might have expected of you. Of all 
the friends I used to have, you are the only one 
who never has gone back on me. But you must 
see how impossible it all is. I am in over my 
head. So what would be the use?” 

“You speak for yourself only, Antoinette,” 
said Laura, a little coldly. “What of your 
daughter?” 

“Oh, if only she were a boy!” the wretched 
woman harped again. 

Laura Stedham removed her arm from her 
friend’s shoulder and shrugged a bit impatiently. 

“That refrain again?” she said, the warmth 
departing from her tone. “I must be going 
before I become vexed with you, Tony. Your 
own position would be quite the same in 
any case — if you had a son instead of a daughter, 
I mean. For my part, I fail to perceive any 


THE EDDY 


19 


choice between being shamed in the eyes of a son 
of in the eyes of a daughter. True, a son would 
not have to tolerate so humiliating a situation. A 
son could, and unquestionably would, clap on his 
hat the moment he became aware of the state of 
things here, and stamp out, leaving it all behind 
him. A son could and would shift for himself. 
But a girl — a girl just out of school — can’t do 
that. She is helpless. She is at the mercy of the 
situation you have made for her. I fear you are 
completely losing your moorings, Tony. When is 
Louise arriving?” 

“Tonight,” replied Mrs. Treharne, who had 
subsided into a sort of apathy of self-pity. “At 
nine something or other. I shall meet her at the 
station in the car.” 

Laura turned a quizzical, slitted pair of eyes 
upon her friend, now busy again with her tear- 
smudged make-up. 

“Not in Judd’s car, surely, Tony?” she said, in 
earnest expostulation. “Why do that? Why not 
let the girl in upon your — your tangled affairs a 
little more gradually? How could she help won- 
dering at the extravagant, vulgar ornateness of 
Judd’s car? For of course she knows perfectly 
well that your own finances are not equal to such 
a whale of a machine as that.” 

“It will not take her long to find out every- 
thing,” said Mrs. Treharne, a little sullenly. 


20 


THE EDDY 


“She need not be uncommonly observant to do 
that. And you remember how embarrassingly ob- 
servant she was even as a child. ,> 

“Give her a chance to observe piecemeal, then,” 
said Laura, laconically. “I shall be with you at 
the station. One of my poor accomplishments, you 
know, is the knack of ameliorating difficult situa- 
tions. And I was always so fond of the child. 
I am stark curious to see how she has developed. 
She was a starchy Miss of fifteen when last I saw 
her. We’ll fetch her home in a taxicab. That 
will be better. It is arranged, then?” 

“Everything that you suggest is as good as ‘ar- 
ranged,’ Laura,” replied Mrs. Treharne, with a 
wan smile. “Your gift of persuasion is irresis- 
tible — I wish I knew the secret of it. It is ex- 
tremely good of you to want to meet the child. 
If I could only meet her with — with such clean 
hands as — well, as I should have!” 

“Never mind — there’ll be a way out of it,” said 
Laura, cheerily. “I am off.” 

She grazed the adeptly-applied artificial bloom 
of the other woman’s cheek with her lips. 

As they stood side by side in the juxtaposition 
of a caress — they were friends from girlhood — 
the contrast between the two women was suffi- 
ciently striking. Laura Stedham, a woman of 
thirty-five, had the slender yet well-rounded struc- 
tural sinuosities of a girl of twenty who passes all 



LAURA, A WOMAN OF THIRTY-FIVE, HAD THE SLENDER YET WELL-ROUNDED 
STRUCTURAL SINUOSITIES OF A GIRL OF TWENTY. Page 20 




























































































































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THE EDDY 


21 


her days in the open air — minus the indubitable 
blowsiness which some open-air young women 
can’t help but reveal to the dissecting eye. Un- 
usually tall, she had the gliding grace of move- 
ment which so many women of uncommon stat- 
ure lack. Even in the cluttered dressing room of 
her friend she made nothing of the obstacles that 
barred her path, but, walking always with a sort 
of nervous swiftness, passed around them to her 
point of destination — a mantel, a table, a hanging 
picture — with a threading ease of locomotion that 
made it seem oddly doubtful if she were depen- 
dent upon the ground at all for a base. There 
are tall women who, if they do not collide with 
stationary objects when they undertake a tour of 
a room, at least arouse the fear that they will 
infallibly do so. Laura possessed an eye for the 
measurement of distances, and the litheness per- 
fectly to follow her measurement. Her complex- 
ion was that of a woman to whom a long tramp, 
even in the city, in the mist or in the blinding 
rain, was not a task, but a delight. Her hair, all 
her own, yet worn in the final perverse mood of 
exaggeration of the coiffure “artist,” was of an 
incredible burnished black, in unusual contrast 
with her full, kindling, Celtic-grey eyes. A cer- 
tain irregularity in the outline of her features — 
especially of her nose, which, far from being ac- 
quiline, was too short by the merest fraction — 


22 


THE EDDY 


lent a certain piquancy to her expression, even 
when her face was in repose. She had the habit, 
growing rare in a world of social avoidances and 
white lies, of looking the person addressing her 
straight in the eye. Is was not an impaling, dis- 
quieting gaze, but one that fairly demanded truth- 
fulness and candor; a gaze unconsciously calcu- 
lated to cause the liar to stutter in the manufac- 
ture of his lie. 

Mrs. Treharne, four years older than Laura, 
had the somewhat hollow-eyed plumpness of an 
indoor woman who wars fiercely but hopelessly 
and unequally upon ever-threatening embonpoint. 
Her triumphs over the enemy never were better 
than drawn battles; she was compelled to devote 
at last three hours a day to her determined, al- 
most hysterical warfare upon the natural process 
of accretion, solely that she might not gain; long 
before she had abandoned hope of achieving the 
fragility of outline she pined for. The nostrums 
she employed in this incessant conflict had made 
her fragile, however, in at least one respect: her 
health ; besides imparting a certain greenish-yellow 
tint to her skin which made her make-up box al- 
most as necessary a part of her equipment as the 
hands wherewith she applied the mitigating tints. 
Five years before she had been a fresh-skinned, 
clear-eyed, naturally pretty woman of a somewhat 
inconsequential type; but the necessity — the hide- 


THE EDDY 


28 


ous duty, as she deemed it — of banting without 
cessation or intermission had left her merely her 
regular features upon which artificially to create 
the illusion of a youthfulness she was far from 
feeling. With the final touch added for an ap- 
pearance in a company, she still looked dainty, 
certainly of impeccable grooming. But she had 
learned to be uneasy under the scrutiny of eyes 
that she felt to be unfriendly, and she had become 
exceptionally partial to veils. Her hair, origin- 
ally a light, unaggressive red, had been “done 
over” into a sort of vivid, brittle “Titian”’ There 
were occasional reddish gleams in her slightly 
furtive, small eyes of hazel. She had a child’s 
foot, and she was inordinately proud of her tiny, 
waxy, too-white hands. In a company she smiled 
continuously in order to display her teeth, which 
were perfectly assembled and of an almost porce- 
lain whiteness. Mrs. Treharne was called a 
pretty woman even by those who perhaps enter- 
tained unexpressed misgivings as to how she 
might look at her rising hour. 

After Laura had gone Mrs. Treharne tried, 
before her glass, the effect of a smile — somewhat 
frozen and quickly obliterated — upon her carefully 
studied and artfully executed make-up mask; then 
sighed drearily as she sank into a chair and be- 
gan polishing her nails upon her palms. 

“Of course Laura is right, as usual — it wouldn’t 


24 


THE EDDY 


help matters particularly if Louise were a boy,’’ 
she mused with puckered brows. “A boy might 
be longer in finding out how affairs stood here; 
but when he did find out — what a storm, what 
heroics, what juvenile reproaches, what a stagey 
to-do there would be ! Perhaps, after all, it is as 
well that Louise is — Louise. She can adapt her- 
self to — to things as they are. She must. There’s 
no other way. She can’t have lost the tact she 
possessed as a child. I wish I knew her better, 
so that I could have some sort of an idea just 
what to expect from her. I hope she understands 
the good sense of closing one’s eyes to things that 
can’t be improved by looking at them. Perhaps 
I shall be lucky enough to marry her off quickly. 
That would be almost too easy a solution for me, 
with my vile luck, to expect.” 

She rang for Heloise to have her furs in readi- 
ness. 

“It was thoroughly decent of Laura,” she 
thought on, finger at lip, “to advise me to bolt 
all this and take refuge with her. But I haven’t 
the nerve — that’s the plain truth of it. How 
could I ask Treharne to renew the allowance? 
What a triumph it would be for him if I were to 
do that ! He would be too Quixotic to view it as 
a triumph, but that wouldn’t alleviate my humil- 
iation in asking him. And what would the three 
or four thousand a year be in comparison with — ” 


THE EDDY 


25 


“The car is at the door, Madame,” announced 
Heloise, appearing with the sables. Mrs. Tre- 
harne smiled at herself before the glass to 
smooth out the wrinkles of her musing, tripped 
lightly down the stairs, and was humming blithely 
when she nodded indulgently at the ponderous, 
shaggy-furred man who was waiting to help her 
into the huge, over-lavish, pulsing car. 

“You take your time, don’t you?” grumbled 
Judd, his breath vaporing into broken clouds in 
the raw December air. “Does that monkey-chat- 
tering maid of yours sleep all the time, or has 
she a case on with the butler? I’ve been tooting 
here for ten minutes.” 

His tone was snarling, and his thin lips were 
drawn away from gnarled teeth. Judd was one 
of those physical anomalies, a man of Falstaffian 
girth with sharp, peaked, predatory features. He 
pulled oh his fur cap to readjust it before step- 
ping into the car, showing a head wholly bald ex- 
cept for crinkly wisps of mixed red and gray 
hair at the sides and back. There was a deep 
crease at the back of his neck where the scant hair 
left off, and his deep-set, red-rimmed little 
watery-blue eyes were alert and suspicious. 

Mrs. Treharne laughed so carelessly that it al- 
most seemed as if she deliberately sought to in- 
tensify his irritation. 

“Still in your villanous humor?” she asked him, 


26 


THE EDDY 


a taunt in her tone. “I believe this is one of the 
days — they grow rather frequent — when you 
should be allowed — required, I should say — to 
ride alone.” 

“Well, that’s easy enough to do,” grumbled 
Judd in a voice curiously high-pitched for so vast 
a man. “See here, perhaps you are conceited 
enough to think — ” 

Very deliberately, and still smiling, Mrs. Tre- 
harne rose to leave the car. Judd looked blankly 
nonplussed. 

“Oh, stop this infernal nonsense, Tony,” he 
said in a tone tinged with alarm. Then his ruddy 
face expanded into a grin behind which there 
seemed to be little mirth. “D’ye know, I believe 
you would be cat enough to step out, before we 
start, and — ” 

“No names, if you please,” Mrs. Treharne in- 
terrupted, choppily. “Decidedly I shall leave the 
car if you feel that it is impossible for you to be- 
have yourself like a human being. I have ceased 
to extract enjoyment from your growling 
humors.” 

It was a tone she might have taken in adress- 
ing a menial. Obviously, however, it was the 
tone required for the proper subjugation of Judd. 
He exuded a falsetto laugh and patted her hand, 
at the same time motioning the chauffeur to start. 

“I don’t complain of your hellish moods, do I, 


THE EDDY 


27 


Tony?” he asked her, still chuckling unpleasantly. 
“In fact, I believe I rather like the feel of your 
claws. All the same, there may come a day 
when — ” 

“When I shall enjoy the sight of your back,” 
calmly interrupted the apparently complaisant 
woman at his side. “Speed the day!” 

Judd’s face took on a half-chagrined, half-wor- 
ried look. It generally did when Mrs. Treharne 
was operating upon him what she privately called 
her “system.” This “system,” in essence, con- 
sisted in her invariable habit of quarreling with 
him and reducing him to abjectness by more or 
less veiled threats of abandoning him to a lone- 
some fate whenever she had something to 
ask of him, or to tell him, that she knew quite 
well would arouse his surliness. It was a neatly- 
devised balancing method, and Mrs. Treharne as 
well understood the vital advantage of striking 
the first blow as she apprehended the extent of her 
power over him. 

“I say, Tony,” said Judd, patting her gloved 
hands again, “you wouldn’t really cut and run just 
because — ” 

“Spare me your elephantine sentimentalities, 
please,” she put in, a little less indifferently. 
“You were never ordained for that sort of thing. 
Anyhow, I would like a sane word or two with 
you. I’ve something to tell you.” 


28 


THE EDDY 


“It’s money, of course,” said Judd, sulkily, 
leaving off patting her hands with ludicrous sud- 
denness. “More damned extravagance, eh?” 

“No, it’s neither money nor extravagance, 
beautifully as those two words trot in tandem,” 
she said, airily, yet with a new soothing note in 
her tone. “It is this: Louise is coming home. At 
once. Tonight.” 

“The devil she is!” blurted Judd. “What for? 
Who sent for her? How long is she going to 
stay? What’s it all about?” 

“One question at a time, please,” Mrs. Tre- 
harne replied, looking indifferently out toward 
the bleak river as they shot by Claremont. It 
was a palpably assumed air of indifference; but 
Judd, unskilled at penetrating feminine subtlety, 
did not discern the nervousness underlying her 
careless manner. “My daughter is coming home 
because she wants to. Nobody sent for her. She 
is not going back to school. She announces that 
in her letter to me ; and she is old enough to know 
her mind and to be entitled to freedom of action. 
She is remaining permanently with me.” 

She had expected him to storm upon hearing 
the news in full. Judd, however, was an individ- 
ual who owed a considerable part of his im- 
mense success as a man of affairs to his studied 
and carefully-elaborated habit of never doing the 
obvious. 


THE EDDY 


29 


He leaned back in the car and half-screened his 
turkey-like eyes with their small, veinous lids. 
Mrs Treharne, surprised at his silence, went on 
hastily: 

“I am wretchedly disturbed over it. I know 
that I have no fit home to offer her. I know that 
I have completely undermined her chance in life. 
But what can I do? She can’t live alone. And 
she merely brings the difficulty to a head by com- 
ing now. She must come home some time, of 
course. The child has not spent her holidays or 
her summer vacations with me for four years. 
Always she has been pushed about among school 
friends, who, glad as they and their people may 
have been to have her, surely must have won- 
dered why she did not come home.” 

Judd fluttered his eyelids and leaned forward 
in his seat. 

“I understand perfectly, of course,” he said 
with a sort of leer. “I understand, you under- 
stand, we understand, they understand, every- 
body understands. Then what are you making 
such a devil of a rumpus about it for?” 

“Well,” said Mrs. Treharne, making the mis- 
take, in dealing with Judd, of falling into a slightly 
apologetic tone, “I thought that perhaps you 
might ” 

“Wait a minute, Antoinette,” interrupted Judd 
with suave brutality, leaning back again among 


30 


THE EDDY 


the cushions and once more half-closing his eyes. 
“It doesn’t matter a damn what I think. I can 
stand it if you can. She isn’t my daughter, you 
know. She’s your daughter. I suppose she has 
been taught to mind her own business? Very 
well. I can stand the situation if you can.” 

The slur cut like a rattan, as Judd, perceiving 
a rare advantage, thoroughly intended that it 
should. He made it worse by patting her hands 
as he spoke. She hated him with an almost vir- 
tuous intensity as he uttered the sneer. But she 
said no more about her daughter’s impending 
arrival during the remainder of the ride. 


CHAPTER II 


T HE chair car was well filled when Louise 
somewhat misty-eyed from parting with 
the doleful group of school intimates who 
convoyed her to the little station, walked down the 
aisle just as the train began to move. Not in the 
least sorry because she was finally leaving school, 
she was affected by the glumness of the girls who 
had insisted upon bidding her goodbye at the 
train; but she had not actually wept at any stage 
of the parting. Perhaps the tear-reddened eyes 
and noses of her school friends had slightly 
touched her risibles; for her by no means latent 
sense of humor invariably struggled to the surface 
when she found herself figuring in anything of the 
nature of a “scene.” She was not lacking in what 
the iron-jowled dowagers call “becoming sensibili- 
ties;” but she was habitually self-contained, and 
tears were unusual with her. Nevertheless, she 
found difficulty in properly discerning objects, 
even at close range, as she searched for her place; 
and it was due to her filmed vision that she took a 
chair that did not correspond to the number on 
her Pullman ticket. 

Women as well as men pivoted about in their 


32 


THE EDDY 


chairs for a second glance at Louise. Her un- 
usual height was emphasized by the loose-fitting 
fur-lined cloth coat which fell straight from her 
shoulders to her skirt’s hem. When she removed 
the coat her simple one-piece gown of blue cloth 
caused cogitating men in surrounding chairs to 
marvel as to how she had ever contrived to get 
into it, and, worse, how she would possibly man- 
age to get out of it. The guimpe of the dress was 
of a creamy embroidery that dissolved baffiingly 
into the whiteness of her neck. 

Louise might have reminded an imaginative 
traveler, had there been such in the car, of a fresh- 
ly-blown, firm-petalled chrysanthemum. There 
are women in whom you first discern an utter, con- 
vincing wholesomeness; later you become aware 
of their beauty. Their wholesomeness, you think 
upon your first comprehensive glance, is like that 
of an early vernal breeze, of dew upon clean 
grass; then the contributing elements of their 
beauty emerge upon your consciousness as through 
a succession of lifted veils. Louise Treharne was 
of this type. Unusually tall, she had none of the 
raw-boned angularities of the over-trained young 
woman who makes a fad of gymnasium or out- 
of-doors activities and who thoughtlessly sacrifices 
the beauty of contour on the profitless altar of 
over-athleticism. Slender, yet well rounded, the 
fine amplitude of her proportions caused her to 


THE EDDY 


33 


look several years older than her age. Her face 
contributed to this effect. It was a face such as 
the imaginary imaginative traveller might vaguely 
have associated with the faces of women stamped 
upon Roman coins. There is a sort of creamy, 
vivid pallor that, equally with ruddiness, denotes 
perfect health and vigor. This was Louise’s; and 
the uncommon regularity of her features was 
tempered and softened by varying phases of ex- 
pression that spoke of an habitual serenity and 
a searching common sense. Her hair, of the dark- 
est shade of lustrous auburn, waved back loosely 
and often a bit rebelliously to the great knotted 
coil in which it was caught at the back of her 
finely-lathed head. Her eyes, the corners of which 
had an almost indistinguishable slant that only be- 
came agreeably noticeable when she smiled, were 
wide and full, and of so dark a brown that, at 
night or in shadowed rooms, they were often sup- 
posed to be black. 

She had barely settled herself, chin in palm, 
to gaze out of the window at the blurred land- 
scape of ice-crusted snow, before she became some- 
what confusedly conscious of a loomful figure 
standing patiently in the aisle beside her. When 
she suddenly turned her head and surveyed him 
with calm, questioning eyes, he pulled off his cap 
of plaid a bit awkwardly and smiled. She men- 
tally observed that his mouth was a trifle over- 


34 


THE EDDY 


large; but his smile, for all of that, she thought, 
was the smile of a man. With the woman’s mys- 
tifying ability mentally to absorb innumerable de- 
tails at a mere glance, she noticed (without in the 
least seeming to notice) that he was of unusual 
stature and of the type called by women, in 
their between-themselves appraisals, “delightfully 
scrubbed-looking;” that he was perhaps a little 
above thirty; that he had a closely-shaven rugged 
jaw and somewhat jutting chin, huge, well-cared- 
for hands, rather closely-cropped brown hair 
slightly greying at the sides, candid grey eyes with 
tiny lines of humor and experience running away 
from their corners. She noticed, too, that he was 
not wearing gloves, which was satisfying. All 
of the other men in the over-warm car were wear- 
ing their heavy cold-weather gloves, and she was 
slightly contemptuous of this as an unmasculine 
affectation. Finally, in the same single glance, 
she perceived his visible embarassment.. 

“Pray don’t disturb yourself,” he said, fumb- 
ling his cap with both hands. (“Why don’t all 
men talk basso?” thought Louise.) “I can reach 
it without your moving at all, if you will permit 
me. My bag, you know. There are some papers 
in it that I want to go over, and ” 

He stopped dead and looked quite wretched 
when Louise came to her feet. 

“I am in your chair,” she said, as he stooped to 


THE EDDY 


35 


pick up a bag that, she now noticed for the first 
time, was wedged by the seat she had unwittingly 
taken. She was about to remove her coat to the 
back of the chair in front — her rightful place, as 
she quickly remembered when she saw the number 
on the panel — when he put out a determinedly 
detaining hand. 

‘‘Don’t make me feel such a disgraceful nuis- 
ance, I beg of you,” he said with an earnestness 
that was out of keeping with his twinkling eyes. 
“One chair is as good as another — better, in fact, 
when one already has possession of it. This bag 
is my only gear. You’ll keep the seat, won’t you? 
That’s immensely kind of you,” as Louise resumed 
the chair. “I wouldn’t have had you move 
for ” 

“Of course,” she interrupted him with a quietly 
frank laugh, “I hadn’t the slightest intention of 
moving. It is more than good of you to suppose 
that I meant to be so agreeable.” 

“That,” he pronounced, again with his liberal 
smile, “is probably a neat, quickly-conceived way 
of letting me down easily, for which I am never- 
theless grateful;” and, bowing, he took the chair 
in front of her, dug into his bag and quickly be- 
came immersed in a batch of formidable looking 
documents. Louise, again leaning back in her 
chair, decided that the rear of his head was 
decidedly shapely. 


36 


THE EDDY 


The excessive wamth of the car was making her 
sleepy, and she closed her eyes and surrendered 
herself to dozing reflections. She was dubious as 
to the reception her mother would give her. She 
had not heard from her mother since writing the 
letter in which she had calmly announced, as some- 
thing settled and therefore not open to debate, 
that she was through with school and would not 
return to Miss Mayhew’s after the holidays. 
Laura had been only partly right as to Louise’s 
reason for quitting school. Louise, it was true, 
was glad enough to escape the nightmare of “com- 
mencement exercises” by leaving half a year in 
advance of her graduation. But she had a far 
deeper reason for quitting the school without con- 
sultation with her mother. She wanted to be at 
home; any sort of a home. She had no very 
pleasurable recollections of the places — there had 
been many of them, and they had not been homes 
— in which she had lived with her mother before 
being sent to the finishing school in central New 
York. Her young girlhood had been a period of 
aimless drifting, at seashore and mountain resorts 
in summer, and in tiny but by no means snug apart- 
ments in New York in the winter; her mother’s 
restlessness and her frequently expressed dislike 
of “smug domesticity” had combined against her 
ever establishing anything even approximating a 
genuine home for herself and her daughter. Lou- 


THE EDDY 


37 


ise only vaguely remembered her father; the sep- 
aration, followed by a divorce, had taken place 
when she was only nine years old. At fifteen she 
had been trundled off to the up-State finishing 
school ; and the school had been the only home she 
had known for close upon four years. Her mother 
had visited her twice a year, taking her to the 
seaside for a week or so during the summer va- 
cation and to Lakewood for a brief stay during 
the holidays. Her mother had always been pro- 
vided with some sort of an excuse for not taking 
Louise to her home — Louise knew that she must 
have some sort of a home — in New York. The 
place was being overhauled, guests had unexpect- 
edly swooped upon her, she was about to start 
upon a journey; Louise had listened, mystified, 
so often to these reasons her mother gave for not 
having her daughter with her in the city at times 
when nearly all the other girls were leaving the 
school for home visits that she at length came to 
believe that her mother was treating her with 
somewhat humiliating disingenuousness. This 
feeling, however, aroused less resentment in the 
girl than it did a feeling of distress; she could not 
avoid, as she grew older, the conviction that she 
was being neglected. The feeling became inten- 
sified when, year after year, she was shunted, as 
she considered, on visits to the homes of her 
schoolgirl friends. It was natural enough, when 


38 


THE EDDY 


she observed how cherished the other girls were 
in their homes, how the arms of strong affection 
constantly were thrown around them, that she 
should compare her own thrust-aside state with 
theirs and that she should develop the intense 
longing of a normal, affectionate young woman 
for similar love and protection. 

She had no sense of resentment against her 
mother; it was rather a feeling of regret that the 
curious aloofness between them, which she had 
no possible way of understanding, had ever risen. 
She hoped that perhaps, after all, her mother 
might really need her as sorely as she felt that she 
herself needed a mother and a home. She was 
returning to her mother with an open mind; no 
longer a child to be shunted and evaded, but a 
woman to be treated with frankness. There were 
some points in connection with her mother’s af- 
fairs that she did not understand but as to which 
she had no undue curiosity. But she was intensely 
glad to be at least on her way home — on her way 
to her mother, at any rate — for good and all; 
and she formed plans for drawing nearer to her 
mother, wistfully hoping that the plans would 
have the fruition she longed for. 

Louise’s reflections gradually, with the purring 
movement of the train, became merged into 
dreams. She awoke with a start when the train 
came to a grinding stop at a station. She began 


THE EDDY 


39 


cutting the pages of a magazine when, glancing 
up, she saw the man with whom she had held the 
little colloquy a while before striding down the 
aisle of the car. In his hand was an unopened 
telegram. She noticed that he was looking at her 
as he approached her seat, and that he was knit- 
ting his brow in a puzzled, serious sort of way. 

He stopped when he came to her chair and held 
out the telegram. 

“The boy paged the dining car, where I hap- 
pened to be,” he said to her, “and, thinking that 
you might still be asleep, I took the liberty of 
signing for your telegram.” 

The telegram was addressed to “Miss Louise 
Treharne.” It was from one of Louise’s girl 
friends at the school, telling her that a piece of 
hand-baggage that Louise had absent-mindedly 
left at the station was being forwarded. 

Louise scarcely glanced at the contents of the 
telegram, so great was her astonishment over its 
method of reaching her. 

“You grant, of course, that I have reason to be 
puzzled,” she said to him, unconstrainedly but en- 
tirely in earnest. She noticed that he was far 
from being unconstrained, and that a certain se- 
riousness sat upon his strong features which she 
had not before observed. “It is plain that you 
knew this telegram was for me.” 

“Otherwise, of course,” he replied, a little 


40 


THE EDDY 


huskily, “I should not have presumed to sign for 
it. I should not have signed for it in any case 
had I not supposed you to be asleep. I feared, 
you see, that you might miss it.” 

“But you do not in the least appease my curios- 
ity,” said Louise, smiling somewhat nervously. 
“If you knew me — as it seems of course you do — 
I cannot understand why you did not reveal your- 
self when we had our little conversation a while 
ago.” 

“But I did not know — I should say I did not 
recall you then,” he said,, plainly flustered. 

“You only add to the mystery,” said Louise. 
“You will enlighten me, of course?” 

He whirled his chair about so that, sitting back 
on the arm of it, he could face her. 

“It is simple enough,” he explained, with a hes- 
itancy which Louise did not fail to note. “When 
the lad with the telegram came through the din- 
ing car, calling out your name, I could not fail, 

with that startling reminder, to remember ” 

He broke off as if reluctant to proceed. 

“Yes?” put in Louise, a bit proddingly. 

“Well, I could not fail to remember your 
father’s daughter,” he said in a low tone, obviously 
striving to regain some ease of manner. 

■‘You know my father?” said Louise, her sense 
of the mystery of it all increasing rather than 
abating. 


THE EDDY 


41 


“Yes,” he replied, still struggling, as Louise 
could see, to conquer a trouble that was visible 
on his features. “I am your father’s attorney. 
I know your mother quite well, too. But this is 
the first time I have seen you since you were a lit- 
tle girl in pigtails and highly-starched skirts.” 
He strove to make his laugh sound natural and 
easy, but it was a failure. Some worry, as to the 
nature of which Louise could of course not even 
guess, was in his voice as well as on his face. 

Louise impulsively held out her hand. 

“The mystery is cleared,” she said, brightly, 
“and it is delightful to meet so old a friend, no 
matter how oddly. Won’t you sit down and tell 
me all about my father and my mother and my- 
self and yourself and — and everybody? Or is it 
permissible for one to cross-examine so solemn 
and cautious a person as an attorney?” 

He sat down in the chair facing hers and stud- 
ied, constrainedly, the pattern of the cap which 
he held out before him. Then he glanced at his 
watch. 

“I am leaving the train at Peekskill,” he said, 
“so there is not much time. You are to be home 
for the holidays?” 

“For the holidays and for all time,” she replied 
with a certain eagerness. “You have visited my 
mother’s home? Because, you know, I never 
have.” She had not meant to say that so baldly, 


42 


THE EDDY 


and she was sorry for the slip as soon as the 
words were out. “It is on Riverside Drive. 
Therefore it must be lovely; the view, at any 
rate. It is lovely, isn’t it?” 

He deliberately evaded the question. 

“You are not returning to school at all?” he 
pointedly counter-questioned her instead. “Does 
you mother know this? I hope I don’t seem in- 
quisitive. But I am really interested in knowing.” 

“You trap me into a confession,” replied Lou- 
ise, smiling. “I simply announced to my mother 
that I was through with school, and here I am 
on my way home. I am hoping that she will not 
be excessively angry with me. Do you think she 
will be ?” 

Louise was finding him decidedly difficult, in 
spite of her efforts to put him at his ease. He be- 
came so immersed in cogitations which Louise 
could see were of the troubled sort that he seemed 
scarcely to listen to what she was saying. 

“You have not answered my question, you 
know, Mr. — Mr. — you see I do not even know 
your name,” said Louise, after a pause, pretend- 
ing to be aggrieved. 

“Oh, pardon the rudeness, won’t you?” he 
said, hastily. “Blythe is my name — John Blythe. 
And forgive me for not having caught your ques- 
tion, Miss Treharne. You don’t mind asking it 
again?” 


THE EDDY 


43 


“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” said Louise, appeased, 
but still curious as to the cause of the perturbation 
he had exhibited ever since he had brought her the 
telegram, and which had become more pronounced 
since she had told him that she was on her way 
to her mother’s home to remain there. She had 
not failed to notice his quite manifest unwilling- 
ness to speak of her mother. Not of a prying na- 
ture, she concluded, without framing the thought 
in words, that, if he had a reason for that unwil- 
lingness, it was decidedly his privilege to keep 
the reason to himself. But her curiosity as to her 
father was not so easily repressed. She had not 
heard him spoken of — her mother forbade the 
subject — for many years, nor had he ever commu- 
nicated with her directly; but her childish recollec- 
tions of him were very sweet. She could not re- 
sist the temptation to speak of him to this newly- 
revealed friend. Why should she not, she thought, 
since he seemed to be so well acquainted with her 
parents — and was her father’s attorney besides? 

“Mr. Blythe,” she found herself saying in a 
tone of unusual hesitation for her, a young woman 
of perfect frankness, “I feel that I may ask you 
about my father, seeing that you know — well, 
everything concerning him and my mother and — 
myself. It has been so many, many years since 
I have even heard him mentioned. Where is he? 
When did you see him last?” 


44 


THE EDDY 


“He lives in Hawaii, Miss Treharne — I saw 
him in Honolulu a few years ago,” replied Blythe, 
promptly enough. 

Louise pondered. There was nothing specific 
she wanted to ask about her father. But she con- 
sidered that Blythe had not told her very much. 

“Is he — well, nice?” she asked him. 

Blythe, disturbed as he was, could not help but 
smile at the naive question. But he sobered be- 
fore he replied. 

“He is almost, if not quite, the finest man I 
ever knew,” he said. “I hope to be allowed to tell 
you all about him some time. I shall be writing 
to him presently. Tut! Here is Peekskill. I 
am dropping off here for a few hours,” and he 
thrust his arms into his overcoat. 

“You will send my love to my father in your 
letter?” said Louise, her eyes slightly filmed, 
touching him upon the sleeve. He looked gravely 
down upon her; her words touched him keenly. 

“I am glad you have asked me to do that, Miss 
Treharne,” he said. “And he will be more than 
glad — depend upon that. Goodbye — not for very 
long, I hope. I am overjoyed to have come upon 
you again — especially at this time,” and he took 
her two hands in his huge palms for an instant 
and was gone. 

“ ‘Especially at this time’ — I wonder what he 
meant by that?” thought Louise. He waved at 


THE EDDY 


45 


her as he passed beneath her car window. She 
was conscious that his smile in doing so was slight- 
ly forced; an instant before he caught sight of her 
through the window she had noticed that his 
face was clouded with worry. 

An hour later Louise was weaving her way 
through the rushing, holiday-chattering crowd to- 
ward the exit gate at the Grand Central station. 
Peering toward the gate, and able, with her un- 
usual height, to see over the heads of the hurry- 
ing women and most of the men, she espied 
her mother, looking somewhat petitely stodgy 
beside the stately Laura, gazing rather wear- 
ily through the iron lattice. “I think 1 see my- 
self being sent to bed without any supper,” 
whimsically thought Louise, considering, as she 
drew nearer, her mother’s bored expression. 
Louise was glad Laura was with her mother ; when 
a mere growing girl she had become gratefully 
familiar with Laura’s self-styled “ameliorating 
knack.” She had become very fond of her 
mother’s handsome, superbly-capricious but sunny- 
natured friend before being packed off to school; 
and now her eyes became slightly blurred at the 
thought that Laura had remembered her and had 
thought enough of her to be with her mother 
at her home-coming. 

“Here is our blossomy, bronze-haired Boadi- 


46 


THE EDDY 


cea !” Louise heard Laura say as she was taken 
into the older woman’s arms and heartily kissed. 
Then Laura thrust her away with assumed an- 
noyance. “But, minx, you are taller than I am; 
a full inch, maybe two, taller ! How do you ever 
expect me to forgive you that, child?” and she 
smiled, drawing Louise toward her again, and 
hugged her once more. 

Louise’s mother brushed the girl’s cheek with 
her lips, her daughter bending toward her. 

“You are grotesquely tall, aren’t you, dear?” 
said Mrs. Treharne, not very good-naturedly. 
Her petulance over Louise’s return was by no 
means allayed; and her masseuse had told her that 
evening that she had gained two pounds in a 
week! “You will have to get clothes that will 
reduce your shocking stature.” Then, swept by 
a momentary compunction, “You are well, dear? 
You are looking excessively well.” 

Louise was not hurt by the tone of her mother’s 
greeting. She was well acquainted with her pa- 
rent’s irritableness, and even more familiar with 
her indurated indifference. The main thing was 
that she was back with her mother, and with a 
chance to strive for a better understanding. 

“But aren’t you a mite thinner, mother?” 
Louise asked, thoroughly meaning it; for there 
wasn’t an ounce of sycophancy in Louise’s make- 
up, and she noticed her mother’s hollowness of 


THE EDDY 


47 


eye and generally distraught air and so concluded 
that she was losing in weight. 

Mrs. Treharne flared instantly. 

“You are not to make game of me, my dear, 
whatever else you do,” she said, icily, to her as- 
tonished daughter. Laura laughed outright and 
caught Louise’s arm in her own as they started 
through the station. 

“Don’t be absurd, Antoinette — the dear is not 
making game of you, as you call it,” said Laura. 
“You know she is incapable of that.” 

“But I am all at sea,” said Louise, still mysti- 
fied over her mother’s inexplicable outbreak. 
“What is it? What did I say that was wrong?” 

Her mother looked at her and saw that the 
girl was wholly innocent of the sarcasm she had 
hastily attributed to her. 

“You know very well, Louise,” she said, in a 
tone meant to be appeasing, “that I am hideously, 
scandalously, shockingly fat; and you cannot ex- 
pect me to be cheerful when you begin to taunt 
me with it before you have had more than one 
glance at me.” 

“But you are anything but stout, mother dear, 
and I really meant what I said,” put in Louise. 
“Why, it perfectly stuns me to think you could 
suppose that I ” 

“Tut-tut — can’t we find something more engag- 
ing to talk about than what the weighing scales 


48 


THE EDDY 


do or do not tell us?” broke in Laura, gaily. 
“Antoinette, dear, won’t you see if you can at- 
tract that taxicab man’s attention?” 

When Mrs. Treharne walked over to the curb 
to summon the chauffeur of the taxicab Laura 
seized the moment to say to Louise in a low 
tone. 

“Some things have occurred to disturb your 
mother, dear; so don’t mind if she seems a bit dif- 
ficile tonight, will you? She is a little annoyed 
over your intention not to return to the school; 
but I shall help you out there. I am going home 
with you now for a little while. You’ll depend 
upon your old friend Laura?” 

Louise, watching her mother, furtively pressed 
Laura’s hand. 

“You know how I always loved you as a little 
girl?” she said simply. Laura’s eyes became sud- 
denly suffused with tears. She knew the girl’s 
need of affection; and she vowed in her heart, 
then and there, crowding back the tears when she 
saw Mrs. Treharne beckoning to them, that she 
would stand in the place of the girl’s mother if 
the time ever came — and she more than dimly ap- 
prehended that come it would — when such a thing 
need be. 

Laura forced the conversation and strove to 
give to it a note of gayety as the taxicab sped 
through the icy streets. Once, in addressing her, 


THE EDDY 


49 


Louise called her “Mrs. Stedham.” Instantly 
Laura assumed a mighty pretence of annoyed 
hostility. 

“Mrs. Hoity-Toity, child,” she said, severely, 
to Louise. “You are not supposing, I hope, that 
I shall permit a woman a full two inches taller 
than I am to call me any such an outlandish name 
as ‘Mrs. Stedham’ ? Great heaven, am I not old 
enough as it is? I am Laura to you, dear; flatter 
me at least, by making me believe that you con- 
sider me young enough to be called by my chris- 
tened name ; the aged have so few compensations, 
you know,” and Louise, not without initial diffi- 
culty, however — for Laura had always been a 
woman to her — called her Laura thenceforth and 
was pleased to imagine that the elder woman was 
her “big, grown-up” sister. 

On the ride to the Riverside Drive house Lou- 
ise, suddenly remembering, mentioned Blythe. 
She described the incident through which he had 
made himself known to her, but forbore, out of a 
certain diffidence which she always felt in her 
mother’s presence, saying anything about Blythe’s 
allusions to her father. She omitted that part 
altogether. 

“How extraordinary!” commented Laura. 
“But John Blythe’s practice is always sending him 
prowling about the country on trains. Everybody 
who knows about such things tells me what an 


50 


THE EDDY 


enormously important personage he is becoming 
in the dry-as-dust legal world. I am sure he does 
astonishingly well with my hideously complicated 
affairs — you know he is my legal man, Louise. Is- 
n’t it odd that you should have met him in such a 
way? Didn’t you find him rather — well, distingue , 
we’ll say, Louise ?” 

“I thought him very fine and ” Louise 

strove for a word haltingly. 

“And with an air about him — of course you 
did, my dear; everybody does,” Laura aided her. 
“If he wasn’t such a perfectly wrong-headed, 
wrapped-up-in-the-law sort of a person he would 
have fallen in love with me long ago, even if I 
am old enough to be his grandmother; he is 
thirty-two, I believe, and I am bordering upon 
thirty-six; but he barely notices me in that way,” 
with an acute emphasis on the “that,” “though 
we are no end of first-rate friends; pals, I was 
going to say; for I’ve known him ever since ” 

Laura came to a sudden stop. She had been 
upon the brink of saying “ever since Blythe had 
helped her to get her divorce from Rodney Sted- 
ham;” but she recollected in time that that was 
not exactly the sort of a chronological milestone 
that should be reverted to in the presence of a 
girl just that day out of school. 

“Louise, did you tell Mr. Blythe that you were 
to remain with me — permanently?” asked Mrs. 


THE EDDY 


51 


Treharne, constrainedly, suddenly joining in the 
conversation. 

Louise reflected a moment before replying. 

“Why, yes, mother, I did; he asked me about 
it, I recall now,” she said. 

“Did he have any comment to make?’’ asked 
her mother in a reduced tone. 

“Why, no, dear,” said Louise. “In fact, he 
appeared to be considerably worried about some- 
thing, and so ” Louise felt herself being fur- 

tively prodded by Laura, and she left off suddenly. 

Opportunely, the taxicab drew up in front of 
an ornate house on the Drive. 

“Do you live here, mother?” Louise inquired, 
innocently. “I wonder how I managed to form 
the impression that you were living in an apart- 
ment?” 

Mrs. Treharne pretended not to have heard 
her. The door was silently opened by a man in 
livery. Laura was watching Louise keenly as 
the girl’s eyes took in the splendor of the foyer 
and hall. The magnificence was of a Pittsburg- 
esque sort, in which beauty is sacrificed to a mere 
overwhelming extravagance; but, for its extrav- 
agance alone, not less than for its astonishing 
ornateness, it had a sort of impressiveness. 

“Why, how dazzling!” Louise could not re- 
frain from commenting. , “How delightfully dif- 
ferent from what I expected ! I am so glad that 


52 


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I am home — home !” She lingered lovingly upon 
the word. 

It was a difficult moment for Laura. But she 
was prepared for it. In addition to the “amelior- 
ating knack” she had a way of being ready for 
contingencies. 

“Antoinette,” she said, mainly to stop Louise, 
“I have one of my headaches coming on. Can’t 
we have some tea in your rooms?” 

“I was just about to suggest that,” said Mrs. 
Treharne, drily, and presently the three women 
were in her sumptuous sitting room, overlooking 
the twinkling lights of the Hudson. A butler 
spread the cloth and brought a fowl and salad and 
jams, while Louise roamed about exclaiming over 
the beauty of the rooms, and Laura fought des- 
perately against her inclination to brood. 

Laura contributed whatever of merriness there 
was to the home-coming feast. Mrs. Treharne 
confined herself to occasional questions directed 
at Louise, and the girl saw that her mother was 
tired and out of sorts; she remembered what 
Laura had told her at the station of her mother’s 
state of mind “over matters,” and she made the 
allowances that she had been accustomed to make 
for her mother since her earliest years. 

The three women were still at the table, begin- 
ning to make allusions to bed — Laura had sum- 
moned her car by ’phone, for it was close upon 


THE EDDY 


53 


eleven — when a great-girthed man, in a sealskin 
coat that fell almost to his heels, an opera hat set 
rakishly on one side of his bald head, and his tur- 
key-like eyes still more reddened with the libations 
that his lurching gait made still more ob- 
vious, lumbered into the room without the least 
attempt at knocking on the door. 

“Hay-o, folks — having a little party?” said 
Judd, lurching toward the table. “Am I in on 
it?” and he plumped himself drunkenly into a 
chair. 

Laura rose at the first sight of him. Mrs. 
Treharne kept her seat but gazed at him vitrioli- 
cally. Louise looked at him quietly enough. She 
was intensely mystified, but quite willing to wait 
for any information as to the intrusion. No in- 
formation, however, was forthcoming. 

“Your mother will show you to your room, 
dear,” said Laura, placing an arm around Louise’s 
waist and guiding her to the door. Under her 
breath she said: “No questions, dear heart. He 
is an — an adviser of your mother. We are going 
to be great cronies, are we not?” She kissed 
Louise and went. Her mother conducted Louise 
to a sleeping room done in white and silver, and 
kissed the girl good night with a sort of belated 
rush of affection. But she said nothing to her in 
explanation of Judd. 


54 


THE EDDY 


Toward midnight John Blythe, after striding 
up and down his solitary bachelor apartment for 
two hours in lounging robe and slippers, went to 
the telephone in his study and called up Laura. 

“Is that you, Laura?” he said, quietly, into the 
transmitter when she answered the call. “What 
time tomorrow forenoon will you be fit to be 
seen?” 

“By noon,” Laura’s voice came back to him 
quietly. “I know what you want to see me about, 
John.” 

“Do you? I doubt that.” 

“It is about Louise Treharne.” 

“I’ll be there by noon. Goodnight.” 

“Goodnight.” 


CHAPTER III 


H ELOISE’S intentional noisiness in rear- 
ranging the toilet articles on the dress- 
ing table aroused Louise. The brilliant 
sunlight of a sparkling winter morning was pour- 
ing into the room. Half-awake and the bright- 
ness of the room filtering through her still-closed 
eyelids, she was obsessed for an instant with the 
fear that, over-sleeping, she was late for the exer- 
cises attending the beginning of a day at Miss 
Mayhew’s school. She smiled at the thought, in 
spite of a brooding, indefinable trouble that had 
burdened her sleep, when, with wide eyes, she 
quickly sensed the lavishness of the room and saw 
the invincibly trig Heloise moving about. 

“Mademoiselle is awake at last?” said Heloise 
in French, a trace of irritation in her tone. 
“One considered that Mademoiselle contemplated 
sleeping until the end of time.” 

Louise disarmed her with a laugh. 

“Perhaps I should have,” she said, lightly, but 
on her guard with her French in the presence of 
so meticulous a critic, “had I not just this mo- 
ment dreamt of coffee. Am I too late for break- 
fast?” 

Of course Mademoiselle should have her 


56 


THE EDDY 


coffee instantly, said the appeased Heloise, ring- 
ing. The maid mentally pronounced that Louise’s 
finishing-school French was almost intelligible to 
one understanding that language. 

Mrs. Treharne had sent Heloise to look after 
Louise until a maid should be obtained for her. 
Louise, sitting up in bed, her fresh, clear-colored 
face aureoled by her agreeably awry mass of 
bronzed hair, the nocturnal braids of which she 
already had begun to unplait, laughed again at 
the thought of being attended by a maid. 

“I shall have to be trained for that,” she said 
to the mollified Heloise. “I never had a maid. I 
doubt if I should know how to behave with a 
maid doing my hair. I think I should find myself 
tempted to do the maid’s instead; especially if 
her hair were as pretty as yours.” 

Heloise was Louise’s sworn, voluble, tooth-and- 
nail, right-or-wrong, everlasting friend from that 
moment. She ’phoned to the butler, demanding 
to know why Mademoiselle’s coffee had not been 
sent, although she had only called for it three 
minutes before, and she buzzed about the tracta- 
ble Louise, arranging her hair with expert fingers, 
cheerful and chirpful, nothing whatever like the 
austere, croaking Heloise who scowled so threat- 
eningly over the slightest unruliness of her actual 
mistress. Heloise was prepared to give an en- 
thusiastic recommendation of Louise to the maid 


THE EDDY 


57 


who should be engaged to attend her mistress’s 
daughter. And she began already to be envious 
of Louise’s unobtained maid. 

When Heloise had finished with her Louise, 
inspecting herself in the glass with frank approval, 
decided that never before had she looked so 
astonishingly well at that hour of the morning. 
But, when the garrulous maid had gone, Louise, 
sipping her coffee, sat in the streaming sunlight 
of the bowed window, watching the sparkling 
ice floes drift down the bleak Hudson, and the 
trouble that had weighted her sleep returned 
upon her, slowly taking shape with her conscious- 
ness. She had been too tired the night before to 
engage in much reflection, before losing herself 
in sleep, upon the incidents — one incident partic- 
ularly — of the previous night. Now she was face 
to face with the gravamen of her depression, 
with an alert morning mind to sift over its ele- 
ments. It was characteristic of her that she did 
not seek to thrust aside her consciousness of 
conditions which she imperfectly understood. 
She understood them, however, sufficiently to 
grasp at least the essentials of the situation. 

Louise, whose native shrewdness was tempered 
by an innate and unconquerable tendency to look 
upon the bright side of the world and of such 
of the world’s people as she came into contact 
with, was far better acquainted with her mother 


58 


THE EDDY 


than her mother was with her ; which was natural 
enough, considering that she had the receptive 
mind of youth, and that her mother’s major trait 
was a sort of all-inclusive indifference. Many 
things in connection with her mother’s manner 
of life, her almost hysterical love of admiration, 
her restlessness and her habitual secretiveness 
with Louise during the girl’s early girlhood years, 
had become all too plain to the daughter as she 
developed into womanhood at the finishing school. 
Perhaps it may be added that a twentieth century 
finishing school for young women commonly is 
an institution wherein all of the pupils’ deductions 
are not made from their text books nor from the 
eminently safe premises laid down by their in- 
structors. The young woman who has spent four 
years at such a school does not step through a 
nimbus of juvenile dreams when she enters into 
the world that is waiting for her. It is true that, 
when she takes her place in the uncloistered world, 
she has a great deal to unlearn; but this is bal- 
anced by the indubitable fact she has not very 
much to learn. Those who expect her to be 
utterly surprised over the departures that she sees 
from the rules of the social game are merely wast- 
ing their surprise. It is mere futility to suppose 
that several hundreds of young women of the 
highly intelligent and eager type who attend ex- 
clusive schools of the so-termed finishing kind, 


THE EDDY 


59 


thrust constantly upon each other for companion- 
ship and the comparison of notes, are going to 
occupy all of their leisure in discussing the return 
of Halley’s comet, or the profounder meaning of 
Wagner, or even the relative starchiness of their 
hair ribbons. 

Louise, participating in the whispered preco- 
cities of the school, had often caught herself on 
the defensive in her mother’s behalf. To seek 
to brush away imputations that seemed to fit her 
mother’s personality and way of life had become 
almost a habit with her. 

The habit, however, was availing her little on 
this her first morning after leaving school in her 
mother’s sumptuous home — “that is, if it is 
mother’s home.” She flushed when she found her- 
self saying that. But the doubt propelled itself 
through her consciousness, and she resolutely 
refused to expel it, once it had found lodgment 
in her mind, merely because it caused her cheeks 
to burn. Her mother’s favorite word, in con- 
temptuously denominating people who lived in 
accordance with convention, was “smug;” Mrs. 
Treharne considered that she had pilloried, for 
the world’s derision, persons to whom she had 
adverted as “smug.” Of the smugness of the 
kind Mrs. Treharne meant when she employed 
the word, there was not an atom in Louise’s com- 
position. Her nature, her upbringing, were op- 


60 


THE EDDY 


posed to the thought of a narrow, restrained, 
buckram social rule. 

But here was a situation — the investiture of 
almost garish splendor in which she found her 
mother living, considered in connection with sub- 
conscious doubts as to certain quite visible flaws 
in her mother’s character which had been forming 
themselves in the girl’s mind for years — here, 
indeed, was a situation with respect to which 
Louise’s unquietude had no need of being based 
upon mere smugness. 

The girl knew quite well that, up to the time of 
her going away to school at any rate, her mother’s 
income had been a limited one — some three thou- 
sand a year voluntarily contributed by the father 
for his daughter’s support and education. It had 
not been, in fact, her mother’s income at all, but 
Louise’s; and it had been voluntarily contributed 
by the father because, as he had been the plaintiff 
in the divorce suit, the decree had not required 
him to aid his detached wife or his daughter at 
all; the court had given him the custody of the 
child, and he had surrendered that custody to the 
mother out of sheer pity for her. 

How, then, had her mother provided herself, 
on an income which, with a daughter to educate, 
called for frugality, if not positive scrimping, with 
such a sheerly extravagant setting? 

And Judd! Louise flushed again when she re- 


THE EDDY 


61 


membered Judd. She did not know his name. 
She had never seen or even heard of him before. 
She only remembered him — and the thought 
caused her to draw her negligee more closely 
about her, for she experienced a sudden chill — as 
the girthy, red-eyed individual who, with the pro- 
prietary arrogance of an intoxicated man who 
seemed perfectly to know his position under that 
roof, had lurched into her mother’s apartments on 
the previous night without the least attempt at 
announcing himself. 

How would her mother explain these things? 
Would she, indeed, explain to her daughter at 
all? In any case, Louise formed the resolve not 
to question her mother. She possessed, what is 
unusual in woman, an instinctive appreciation of 
the rights of others, even when such rights are 
perversely altered to wrongs. She considered that 
her mother’s affairs were her own, in so far as 
they did not involve herself, Louise Treharne, in 
any tacit copartnership; and as to this point she 
purposed ascertaining, before very long, to just 
what extent she had become or was expected to 
become involved. For the rest, she was con- 
scious of a distinct sympathy for and a yearning 
toward her mother. In her reflections she gave 
her mother the benefit of every mitigating cir- 
cumstance. 

Turning from the window, Louise saw her 


62 


THE EDDY 


mother standing before the dresser glass studying 
her haggard morning face, now lacking all of 
the sorely-required aids to the merely pretty regu- 
larity of her features, with a head-shaking lugubri- 
ousness that might have had its comic appeal to an 
unconcerned onlooker. Louise, however, was 
scarcely in a mood of mirth. 

“I knocked, my dear, but you were too much 
absorbed,” said Mrs. Treharne, offering her 
daughter her cheek. “You were in a veritable 
trance. Did you get enough sleep, child? Was 
Heloise in a scolding humor? She makes my life 
a misery to me with her tongue. What beautiful 
hair you have! And what a perfect skin! A 
powder puff would mar that wonderful pallor. 
Yet you are not too white. It becomes you, with 
your hair. Appreciate these things while you have 
them, dear; look at your mother, a hag, a witch, 
at thirty-nine ! But, then, you will keep your looks 
longer than I; you pattern after the women of 
your ” 

She came perilously close to saying “your 
father’s family,” but adroitly turned the phrase 
when she caught herself in time. Louise, putting 
on a cheerful mask, replied to her mother’s trivial- 
ities and devised some of her own. Her mother 
had not lost her banting-killed bloom when Louise 
had last seen her at such an hour in the morning; 
and the girl was inwardly pained to note how all 


THE EDDY 


63 


but the mere vestiges of her remembered prettiness 
had disappeared. Mrs. Treharne caught her look- 
ing at her with a certain scrutinizing reflective- 
ness, and she broke out petulantly: 

“Don’t pick me apart with your eyes in that 
way, Louise ! I know that I am hideous, but for 
heaven’s sake don’t remind me of it with your 
criticizing, transfixing gazes!” 

She was of the increasing type of women who, 
long after they have the natural right to expect 
adulation on account of their looks, still hate to 
surrender. Louise quickly perceived this and pro- 
vided unguents for her mother’s sensitiveness. 

They chatted upon little matters, Mrs. Tre- 
harne so ill at ease (yet striving to hide her rest- 
lessness) that she found it impossible to sit still 
for more than a minute; she fluttered incessantly 
about the room, her wonderful negligee of em- 
broidered turquoise sailing after her like the out- 
spread wings of a moth. After many pantheress- 
like rounds of the room, during which Louise 
somehow felt her old diffidence in her mother’s 
presence returning upon her, Mrs. Treharne, after 
her evident casting about for an opening, stopped 
before Louise and pinched her cheek between dry 
fingers. 

“At any rate, my dear,” she said with a trace 
of her old amiability and animation, “you are not 
a frump or a bluestocking! There was a time 


64 


THE EDDY 


when I had two fears: that you would not grow 
up pretty and that you would become bookish. 
And here I find myself towered over by a young 
princess, and you don’t talk in the least like a girl 
with crazy notions of keeping up her inane school 
studies.” Then, after a slight pause: “Are you 
religious, my dear, or — er — well, broad-minded?” 

Louise smothered her mounting laugh, for fear 
of offending her mother in her mood of amiability; 
but her smile was eloquent enough. 

“Is there any incompatibility between those two 
states of mind, mother?” she asked. 

“Don’t dissect my words, child; you quite un- 
derstand what I mean,” said the mother, with a 
slight reversion to peevishness. “Your father, you 
know, was — no doubt still is — shockingly narrow ; 
he hadn’t the slightest conception of the broad, big 
view; he belonged in this respect, I think, in the 
Middle Ages; and I have been tortured by the 
fear that you might — might — ” 

She hesitated. She had not meant to mention 
Louise’s father, much less to speak of him even in 
mild derogation; and she suddenly recalled how, 
years before, there had been a tacit agreement 
between them that Louise’s father was not to be 
mentioned. The agreement had been entered into 
after an occasion when Louise, then a child of 
eleven, with the memory of her vanished father 
still very keen in her mind, had rushed from the 


THE EDDY 


65 


room, in blinding tears, upon hearing her mother 
speak of him in terms of dispraise. 

“I did not have much time at school for self- 
analysis, mother,” said Louise, coming to her 
mother’s aid. “I suppose I am normal and neutral 
enough. I am not conscious of any particular 
leaning.” She flushed, swept by a sudden sense of 
the difficulty, the incongruity, of such a conversa- 
tion with her mother amid such surroundings. 
“Mother,” she resumed, hastily, “I am so keen to 
see New York again that I am hardly capable of 
thinking of anything else just now. Are we to 
go out?” 

“The car is yours when you wish it, Louise,” 
said Mrs. Treharne, absently. “I rarely go out 
until late in the afternoon.” 

“The car?” said Louise. “You have a car, 
then?” 

Her mother glanced at her sharply. It was 
sufficiently obvious that she was on the lookout for 
symptoms of inquisitiveness on Louise’s part; 
though Louise had not meant her question to be 
in the least inquisitive. 

“I have the use of a car,” said Mrs. Treharne, 
a little frigidly. “It belongs to Mr. Judd.” 

Instinctively Louise felt that “Mr. Judd” was 
the sealskinned Falstaff whose unceremonious ap- 
pearance the night before had startled her. But 
she remained silent. Nothing could have induced 


66 


THE EDDY 


her to ask her mother about Mr. Judd. Her 
mother did not fail to notice her silence, which of 
course put her on the defensive. 

“Mr. Judd,” she said, “is — a — ” she hesitated 
painfully — “my business adviser. He has been 
very good and kind in making some investments in 
— in mining stocks for me; investments that have 
proved very profitable. He is alert in my interest. 
It was Mr. Judd, my dear, whom you saw last 
night. He was not quite himself, I fear, or he 
would not have made his appearance as he did. 
He has helped me so much that of course it would 
be ungrateful of me not to permit him the run of 
the place.” She rambled on, as persons will who 
feel themselves to be on the defensive. “In fact, 
he — he — But of course, if you have formed a 
prejudice against him on account of last night, 
there will be no occasion for you to meet him ex- 
cept occasionally.” 

Louise caught the hollowness, the evasiveness, 
of the explanation. Not one word of it had rung 
true. Louise had never felt sorrier for her 
mother than she did at that moment. She noticed 
a certain hunted expression in her mother’s face, 
and it cut her to the quick. She placed a long, 
finely-chiselled arm, from which the sleeve of the 
negligee had slipped back to the shoulder, around 
her mother’s neck. 

“But I haven’t the least use for a car, dearie,” 


THE EDDY 


67 


she said. It was not with deliberation that she 
ignored altogether what her mother had been say- 
ing as to Judd; it was simply that she could not 
bring herself to offer any comment on that subject. 
“I am a walker; every day at Miss Mayhew’s I 
did ten miles — even in rain and snow, and it is 
clouding for snow now, I think. You will not 
mind my going out for a long walk? I am wild 
for air and exercise.” 

Mrs. Treharne was grateful to the girl for 
turning it off in that way even if, by so doing, 
Louise indicated that she was of more than one 
mind with respect to what had been told her re- 
garding Judd. And Mrs. Treharne, careless and 
indifferent as she was, could not visualize her 
daughter in the gigantic yellow-bodied Judd car 
without being swept by a feeling that was distinctly 
to her credit. 

Laura Stedham, over her cocoa, was weaving 
with careless rapidity through her morning mail 
when John Blythe arrived shortly before noon. 
Laura’s apartment overlooked the west side of 
the Park. Its dominant color scheme now was 
based upon a robin’s egg blue; but there was a jest 
among Laura’s friends that they never had seen 
her apartment look the same on two visits run- 
ning; they declared that every time Laura left the 
city for as long a period as a fortnight, she left 


68 


THE EDDY 


orders with her decorator to have her apartment 
completely done over so that even she herself 
quite failed to recognize it when she returned. 

Blythe, throwing his snow-sprinkled storm-coat 
over the extended arm of Laura’s brisk maid, 
strolled over to a window and watched the still, 
unflurried flakes sift through the bare branches 
of the Park trees. His hands were thrust deep 
into his pockets and his eyes were so unusually 
meditative that Laura, used to his absorption as 
she was, laughed quietly as she turned from her 
escritoire. 

“Yes, John, it is snowing,” she said, thrusting 
away a heap of still-unopened letters. 

Blythe turned to her with a twinkling look of 
inquiry. 

“I thought perhaps you might not have noticed 
it,” chaffed Laura, “seeing that you were looking 
right at it. You require an excessive amount of 
forgiveness from your friends. I believe you have 
not even seen me yet, although I’ve employed a 
good hour that I might have spent in bed in devis- 
ing additional fascinations in anticipation of your 
coming.” 

“Meaning, for one thing, I suppose,” said 
Blythe with rather an absorbed smile, that — 
that—” 

“Don’t you dare call it a kimono,” interrupted 
Laura. “It’s a mandarin’s coat — a part of the 


THE EDDY 


69 


Peking loot. Of course you are crazy over it?” 

It was a magnificent pale blue, ermine-padded 
garment, with a dragon of heavy gold embroidery 
extending from nape to hem down the loose back. 

Blythe studied it for a moment and then glanced 
significantly at the faint-blue walls and ceiling of 
the room. 

“I presume,” he said, solemnly, “you had your 
rooms done this last time to match the Mother 
Hub — I mean the mandarin’s coat?” 

They did not need thus to spar, for they were 
(what, unhappily, is so unusual between men and 
women in a world devoid of mid-paths) close 
friends; even comrades, in so far as Blythe’s hard 
work permitted him to assume his share of such 
a relationship; and they understood each other 
thoroughly, with no complication differing from a 
genuine mutual esteem to mar their understanding. 
Nevertheless, both of them found it a trifle difficult 
to undertake the lead on the subject that was 
uppermost in their minds and the occasion of 
Blythe’s forenoon visit. 

Laura with her customary helpfulness, finally 
gave him an opening. 

“She told us of having met you on the train,” 
said Laura, as if in continuation of a conversa- 
tion already begun on the theme. “An odd chance, 
wasn’t it? I wonder if you were so enormously 
struck with her as I was?” 


70 


THE EDDY 


“You met her at the station, did you not?” said 
Blythe, quietly. “That was like you; like your 
all-around fineness.” 

“Thanks,” said Laura, appreciatively. “But 
you evade my question. Isn’t she a perfect 
apparition of loveliness?” 

“I wish she were less so,” said Blythe, not con- 
vincingly. 

“No, you don’t wish that,” said Laura. “I 
know what you wish; but it is not that.” 

Blythe was silent for a space and then he fell 
to striding up and down the room. 

“Did you ever come upon such an unspeakable 
situation, Laura?” he broke out, stopping to face 
her. “What is Antoinette Treharne thinking of? 
Is she utterly lost to any sense of — ” 

“I wouldn’t say that, John,” put in Laura, hold- 
ing up a staying hand. “It is natural enough, I 
know, for you to reach such a conclusion; on a 
cursory view the case seems to be against her; 
but you must remember that Louise came home 
without warning. Antoinette had no opportunity 
to devise a plan. She is horribly humiliated. I 
know that.” 

“Your usual method of defending everybody 
— and you know how I like you for that as for so 
many other things,” said Blythe. “But, Laura, 
Louise’s mother knew that the girl must leave 
school in half a year at all events. She must have 


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considered some way out of the hideous mess?” 

“None that she ever mentioned to me,” said 
Laura. “You know her habit of procrastination. 
I grazed the subject two or three times in talking 
with her. She dodged, or was downright brusque. 
She has no plan, I am sure. But she is sorely dis- 
tressed over it all, now that the situation has come 
to a head. I am very sorry for her.” 

“But the girl?” said Blythe, a slight note of irri- 
tation in his tone. “How about her?” 

“I should be more worried if I were not so en- 
tirely confident that Louise is amply competent to 
take care of herself,” said Laura. “She is no 
longer a girl, John. She is a woman, and a 
woman with more than her share of plain sense. 
Her position, of course, is positively outrageous, 
heartrending. But I am at a loss to suggest a 
single thing that her friends — that you or I, or 
both of us — could do just now to better it.” 

“That,” said Blythe, a little hoarsely, “is just 
the devil of it.” 

“I should like to have Louise with me,” Laura 
went on, “but I doubt if she would come, although 
I believe she is fond of me. Not just yet, at any 
rate. She would not care to leave her mother after 
her long separation from her. Louise will find out 
the situation herself. No doubt she already has 
sensed a part of its sinister aspect. I am horribly 
sorry for her. But, as I say, she is a woman of 


72 


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character. She will know what to do. All that 
we can do, for the present at any rate, is to be on 
guard for her, without seeming to be. Of course 
she shall know that we are her friends. She 
already knows that I am her friend. Did you, on 
the train — ” 

“Yes,” put in Blythe, apprehending what Laura 
was going to ask. “I told her that I knew her 
father. The matter came about in an odd way. I 
wish, Laura, that you’d make it clear to her, if 
you have the chance, that she — that I — ” 

He halted embarrassedly. 

“I quite understand,” Laura aided him, smiling. 
“That you mean to be her friend, too — of course 
I shall tell her that,” and Laura looked reflective 
when she observed how Blythe’s face brightened. 
It soon clouded again, however, when he broke 
out: 

“She will find out, of course, sooner or later, 
that she has been taken care of and educated for 
the past five years and odd with Judd’s money,” 
he said, worriedly. “You can imagine how intense 
her mortification will be over that discovery. Judd, 
you know, in contempt of George Treharne, forced 
Mrs. Treharne to return to me the quarterly 
checks that Treharne sent me from Hawaii for 
Louise — for of course I sent the checks to Antoi- 
nette. I explained this to Treharne when I saw 
him in Honolulu a few years ago. He was badly 


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73 


cut up over it. But of course he was powerless 
to do anything about it. He refused to take the 
checks back, though, and directed me to deposit the 
money to Louise’s account. I have nearly fifteen 
thousand dollars — five years’ accrued checks, for 
Treharne has never stopped sending them — on 
deposit for Louise now. Don’t you think she had 
better be told this?” 

“Wait a while,” advised Laura. “Wait until 
she discovers how the land lies. Then she will be 
coming to you. If you told her now it would in- 
volve your telling her also that she had been 
educated with Judd’s money. I think it better that 
she discover that for herself — if she must discover 
it. Then she will know what to do. She will 
be seeking you out then,” and Laura smiled in- 
wardly when again she noted how Blythe’s face 
cleared at her last words. 

“There is only one thing to do, of course, and 
that is to follow your advice and let the matter 
stand as it is for the present,” said Blythe, pre- 
paring to go. “But the thing is going to sit pretty 
heavily upon me. I have been Treharne’s legal 
man ever since my senior partner died, as you 
know, and, although it isn’t of course expected of 
me, I can’t help but feel a certain responsibility for 
his daughter when she is thrust into such a misera- 
ble situation as this. I wonder,” catching at a new 
and disturbing idea, “if her mother will expect 


74 


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Louise to meet the wretched crew of near-poets, 
maybe-musicians and other rag-tag-and-bobtail 
that assemble at what Antoinette calls her Sunday 
evening ‘salon?’ ” 

“Antoinette’s ‘zoo,’ I call it,” laughed Laura. 
“What if Louise does meet them? They can’t 
harm her. They, the unfortunate make-believes, 
will only appeal to her risibles, if I mistake not. 
Louise must have got her sense of humor from 
her father. Antoinette hasn’t a particle of 
humor in her composition. If she had how 
long do you suppose she would continue her ab- 
surd ‘salon? ” 

Laura, in extending her hand to Blythe, who had 
resumed his stormcoat, gazed quizzically into his 
rugged face. 

“John,” she said, “is your solicitude for Louise 
solely on account of the — er — sense of responsi- 
bility you feel toward her father?” 

Blythe caught the twinkle in her eyes. 

“Humbug!” he ejaculated, striding out to the 
obligato of Laura’s laugh. 

When they were settled in the car for their 
snowy ride that afternoon, Mrs. Treharne turned 
in her seat to face Judd. 

“You will understand,” she said in a tone quite 
as hard as it was meant to be, “that I am not wast- 
ing words. If you repeat your grossness of last 


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75 


night in my daughter’s presence, our — our friend- 
ship is at an end. That is understood?” 

“Now, now, shush, shush, Tony,” said the Gar- 
gantuan Judd, soothingly, and resorting to his 
habit of patting her hands, “not so severe, not so 
terrifically severe, you know. How did I know 
that your daughter would be there? Didn’t know 
the least thing about it — forgot, I mean, that she 
was coming. Got a bit screwed at the club, and — ” 

“I don’t elect to listen to that sort of an expla- 
nation,” interrupted Mrs. Treharne, with cold 
deliberation. “I am unutterably weary of your 
porcine manners. It is bad enough that I have 
permitted myself to endure them. You are not 
imbecile enough to suppose that my daughter is to 
endure them, too ? You are to meet her only when 
it is absolutely necessary; be good enough to re- 
member that. While she is with me — I don’t now 
know how long that is to be — you are to curtail 
your visits; and if you come even once again in 
the sodden condition that you were in last night, 
I am done with you from that instant. I make 
myself plain, I hope?” 

“ ’Pon honor, Tony, you are horribly severe,” 
blurted Judd, whiningly. “You know very well 
that if you were to cut and run I’d blow my head 
off.” He felt that he meant it, too; for Judd was 
tremendously fond of the fading woman seated 
beside him, as he had been for years. He was 


76 


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blind to her departing prettiness; to him she was 
the one woman in the world — his prim, elderly 
wife, the mother of his family of grown children, 
being utterly negligible in his view; and Mrs. Tre- 
harne knew her complete power over him as well 
as she knew the lines of her face. 

“I wish,” she said, with a cutting way of dwell- 
ing upon each word, “that you had blown your 
head off before ever I met you. I might then have 
been able to cling to at least the shreds of self- 
respect.” 

Judd had no reply to make to that, and they 
rode the rest of the way in silence. 


CHAPTER IV 


B Y mid-January Louise had completed her 
inventory of the situation. She faced her 
position without flinching and with no visi- 
ble sign of the distress the gradually unfolding 
picture caused her, save a certain silent preoccupa- 
tion from which Laura vainly sought to rouse her 
by taking her on incessant rounds of the theatres, 
whisking her off on short up-State and Long Island 
motor tours, and providing other means of distrac- 
tion and excitement. Laura’s heart ached for 
Louise. Her own girlhood had been clouded by 
trouble. Orphaned at sixteen, an heiress with no 
disinterested advisors save those who were the 
legal guardians of her person and estate, she had 
yielded shortly after leaving school to a girlish 
infatuation and entered upon a surreptitious mar- 
riage with a man who, with his child-wife’s large 
wealth at his disposal, had surrendered to one dis- 
sipation after another until, eventually becoming a 
drug fiend, he had, in his treatment of her, de- 
veloped into such an utterly savage and irresponsi- 
ble brute that she was compelled to divorce him, 
after which he had been put under permanent 
restraint. It had taken Laura long years to re- 


78 


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cover her natural equipoise after her bitter disillu- 
sionment. Louise’s trouble, Laura could not help 
apprehending, was even more grievous than her 
own had been, intensified as she knew it must be 
by the girl’s carefully-screened feeling of humilia- 
tion. 

Laura admired Louise beyond words for her 
uncomplaining acceptance of her bitter bolus. 

“I never saw such pluck,” she told John Blythe 
time and again. “It is the pluck of a thorough- 
bred. I believe she thoroughly understands every- 
thing now, except that she is in Judd’s debt for her 
education. Her loyalty to her mother is wonder- 
ful, beautiful; far greater than Antoinette really 
deserves. I don’t remember ever meeting a girl 
or woman whom I admired so much as I do Louise 
Treharne.” 

Laura could not fail to note how Blythe’s clear 
grey eyes would glisten when thus she praised the 
girl. 

“Louise is like her father,” he would say in reply 
to Laura’s enthusiasm. “You know what a fine, 
game man George Terharne was and is. I’ll never 
forget how generous he was in his treatment of 
me — and he tried to prevent me from knowing it, 
too — when, as a cub lawyer, I was first starting 
out on my own hook; and there wasn’t the least 
reason in life why he should have been so decent 
to me, either. You remember how he never whim- 


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79 


pered when Antoinette dragged his — Oh, well, 
no use in referring to that. But, when I first met 
the grown-up Louise on the train — after I 
accidentally discovered her identity, I mean — I 
couldn’t help but observe how her resemblance to 
her father — ” 

“To whom,” Laura watched him with twinkling 
eyes, “your sense of responsibility is so great that 
— er— that — ” 

Whereupon Blythe would flush hotly and pro- 
ceed to shrivel Laura with whatever in the way of 
polite invective occurred to him in his con- 
fusion. 

The thought of leaving her mother for the sake 
of extricating herself from a difficult and tax- 
ing situation never entered Louise’s mind. Her 
mother, she felt, needed her. It was not, she con- 
sidered, a problem for her interposition; she 
shrank from the thought of even mentioning it. 
She knew that it was an utterly impossible situa- 
tion; she had a profound belief that it was not, 
from its very nature, destined to last; but she pre- 
ferred that her mother should take the initiative 
in casting off the evil. She clearly saw how, from 
day to day, her mother was becoming increasingly 
conscious of the grave trouble she was heaping 
upon her daughter’s young shoulders; she per- 
ceived how her mother, not inherently vicious, 
simply was in the bondage of an ingrained, luxury- 


80 


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loving selfishness, and that, having been cast out 
of the social realm in which she formerly had 
moved, she was now possessed by a sort of despair 
which, more than anything else, prevented her 
from making the attempt to extricate herself 
from the slough. 

Louise, then, schooled herself to wait. It was 
a sort of waiting that drew heavily upon her 
natural store of equanimity. But she could see no 
other course, and hopefulness is the tandem mate 
of youth. 

“I have lived long enough,” Laura said to her 
one afternoon, when they were driving, during 
this trying period when Louise was testing her 
adaptability to the utmost, “to have discovered 
that nothing matters very much except one’s own 
peace of mind. If one have that, the rest is all 
a mirage. I don’t mean the peace of mind that 
proceeds from a priggish sense of superiority to 
human weaknesses. That, I am pleased to say, 
is a sort of mental peace that I haven’t yet exper- 
ienced, and I hope I never shall. But when one’s 
hands are just decently clean, and one at least has 
tried to shake off the shackles forged by one’s own 
little meannesses, a sort of satisfying mental quiet 
ensues that is worth, I think, more than anything 
else one finds in life.” 

“But one’s worry for others?” quietly suggested 
Louise, putting it in the form of a question. 


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81 


Laura pressed the girl’s hands between her 
own. 

“All of us, dear, must know the meaning of 
solicitude — often painful solicitude — for others at 
some period of our lives,” she said, tenderly. “1 
know what you mean. You are carrying yourself 
nobly through a difficult ordeal. Let that con- 
sciousness suffice. You will have the right to feel 
proud, in the coming time, to remember that you 
stood the test — as we are proud of you now.” 

“ ‘We?’ ” said Louise, puzzling. 

“We,” repeated Laura, steadfastly. “I think 
you scarcely understand, dear, how profoundly 
interested — yes, and chivalrously interested, too — 
John Blythe is in your — your problem.” 

Louise felt the blood rushing to her face. 

“Does Mr. Blythe know?” she asked, her 
cheeks tingling. 

“How could he avoid knowing, dear?” rejoined 
Laura, gently. “He is your father’s lawyer. He 
is an occasional visitor at your — ” she hesitated; 
“ — visitor on Riverside Drive,” she resumed. 
“And so of course he knows — everything. You 
may be glad of that, dear. There is no man in 
the world whose friendship I value more highly 
than that of John Blythe. I think he would like 
to have you feel — I know, in fact, that he would — 
that he is interested in your — your concerns; that, 
indeed, in a way, he is standing guard for you.” 


82 


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Louise studied for a little while. 

“I should have understood, of course, that he 
knew,” she said, hesitatingly. “But it did not 
occur to me. I am afraid that I should have been 
a little reluctant to meet him on those two or three 
occasions at your home if I had known that he — ” 
She paused. 

“Why, dear child, should you have such a feel- 
ing when a man of innate nobility, who knew you 
when you were a little girl ” 

“It is wrong, I know,” put in Louise, hastily. 
“But I find it so hard to regard him as — as just 
a lawyer, you know, Laura. He is not like a 
lawyer at all — at least I have not found him so. 
He is ” 

Laura pointed a teasing finger at her, which 
caused the color to reappear on Louise’s face. 

“Don’t try to tell me what he is, Louise,” said 
Laura, smiling. “Don’t you suppose I know? 
But you don’t know how intensely glad I am to 
hear that you can’t regard Mr. Blythe as — as 
‘just a lawyer.’ I shall tell him that you are going 
about criticizing his professional ability.” 

“Don’t do that — please!” said Louise in such 
an obvious panic that Laura pinched her cheek 
reassuringly. 

The meetings with Blythe to which Louise re- 
ferred were casual ones in Laura’s apartment. 
Blythe was in the habit of dropping in occasionally 


THE EDDY 


83 


for coffee — he abominated tea — and a chat at 
Laura’s tea hour in the late afternoon; and Laura 
duly noted, not without slyly chaffing him over it, 
that he had made this an almost daily habit since 
his discovery that he stood a pretty fair gambling 
chance of finding Louise there almost any after- 
noon. Once, when Laura and Louise came in 
from a drive which had been prolonged rather 
later than usual, they entered the library quietly, 
to find Blythe, looking decidedly glum, browsing 
among the books without the least seeming of 
being interested in any of them, for his hands 
were thrust deep into his pockets and they caught 
him yawning most deplorably. But at sight of 
the two women — one woman, Laura said, accus- 
ingly, to him after Louise had gone home in 
Laura’s car — he had brightened so suddenly and 
visibly that Laura had to profess that her rippling 
laugh was occasioned by something she had seen 
during her drive. 

On these occasions Laura had found it impera- 
tively necessary to leave them together in order to 
confer with hei # servants. Louise and Blythe had 
talked easily on detached, somewhat light matters, 
finding an agreeable mutual plane without effort. 
Louise, remembering his somewhat sober preoccu- 
pation on the train, had been surprised and 
pleased — though she could not have told why — 
to note his possession of a rather unusual social 


84 


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charm. She was pleased, too, that, except in the 
matter of a remarkable physique, he was not to be 
rated as a handsome man. His features were too 
rugged for that. Strength, keenness and kindli- 
ness shone from his masterful countenance ; but he 
was anything but handsome judged from the mag- 
azine-cover standard. Louise had amused Laura 
one day by saying that she found Blythe’s face 
“restful.” She had not the least partiality for 
men of the generally-accepted straightout hand- 
some type of features; she was, in truth, a little 
inclined to be contemptuous of an excessive facial 
pulchritude in men. But — again for a reason 
which she could scarcely have explained — she was 
glad that Blythe was perhaps two inches more 
than six feet in height, that he was as straight as 
a lance, and that he found it necessary to walk 
sidewise in order to get his shoulders through 
some of Laura’s lesser doors. 

On her last meeting with Blythe Louise had 
asked him, with a certain hesitancy which he 
noticed, if he had written to her father. 

“Yes,” Blythe had replied, simply, “and I sent 
him your love.” He had not offered to become 
more communicative ; and Louise, concluding that 
his reticence on the subject might be based on a 
considerateness for her which it might be unfair 
for her to seek to fathom, did not mention the 
matter to him again. She had an oddly resolute 


THE EDDY 


85 


confidence in him, considering how short the time 
had been since he had come into her life; and 
she felt that, if he now exhibited a taciturnity 
which puzzled her, it would be explained in due 
time. 

Louise Treharne belonged to that rare (and 
therefore radiant) type of women who know how 
to wait. 

Louise’s life at the house on the Drive quickly 
resolved itself into a daily programme tinctured 
with a monotony that could not but wear upon 
the spirits of a young woman of a naturally cheer- 
ful and gregarious temperament. 

Her mother, generally in a state of feverish un- 
rest that marked her strained incertitude over a 
situation which, in a way, was more intolerable to 
her than to her daughter because she was guiltily 
conscious that she was the maker of it, usually 
dropped into Louise’s room for an hour’s chat 
during the forenoon. She was alternately affec- 
tionate, stilted, indifferent and petulant in her atti- 
tude toward her daughter. She did not seek, in 
her brooding self-communings, to thrust aside the 
keen consciousness that she was utterly and hope- 
lessly in the wrong; but this consciousness did not 
serve to allay her irritation, even if it was directed 
against herself. Like most women, she hated to 
be in the wrong; and she particularly loathed the 


86 


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thought of confessing herself in the wrong. She 
was less immoral than unmoral; her descent had 
been due to a sort of warped view as to forbidden 
relationships, nourished by an inborn and intense 
dislike for the sovereignty of convention — “the 
tyranny of the smug,” she habitually called it — 
and based essentially upon her love of luxurious 
and extravagant living. But a consciousness of 
these facts only made her self-contempt the more 
keen. She measured and despised her sordidness. 
She was not, she fell into the habit of reflecting 
after her daughter’s return, the victim of anybody 
but herself; her days of ardor had slipped away; 
she well knew that she had not even the excuse 
of a fondness for the man who had made her a 
social pariah. If she had ever experienced any 
such a fondness that fact might have mitigated, at 
least in her own self-view, the rawness of her 
course. But she cared nothing for Judd, which 
made her case abominable, and she knew it. 

Yet her weakened will, her character rendered 
flaccid by years of careless self-indulgence, made 
it acutely difficult for her to contemplate the 
thought of abandoning her way of living, even 
for the sake of her daughter. Her prettiness was 
now purely a matter of meretricious building up; 
she would soon be forty; she fumed inwardly at 
the thought of middle age, which now, for her, 
was only around the corner, so to speak; she had 


THE EDDY 


87 


been cast off by her own kind; and the terminal 
idea of her self-communings always was that, since 
there was no hope for her in any event, no matter 
what she might do, she might as well finish the 
scroll. She pushed aside Louise’s involvement in 
the difficulty as something that would — that would 
have to — adjust itself. A way out for Louise must 
present itself sooner or later; but the way out for 
her daughter must be one that would not demand 
too great a sacrifice — if any sacrifice at all — on 
her own part. Perhaps a good marriage could 
be contrived for Louise ; that would be the easiest 
and most natural solution; and she would cast 
about in her mind for eligibles on whose sensitive 
social concepts perhaps her own method of life 
would not grate. Her dreary meditations usually 
terminated with futilities of this sort. 

Louise, fighting back the oppressiveness that 
had clutched her ever since her return from school, 
was cheerful and sunny when her mother was with 
her. She made no allusion of any sort to the 
conditions of her environment. Her mother, 
noticing this, was grateful for it, and she was 
conscious of a genuine and growing admiration for 
the mingled dignity and delicacy of her daughter’s 
behavior. On one of her forenoon visits to 
Louise’s dressing room the mother herself, swept 
by a feeling of remorse in the contemplation of 
the girl’s fragrant, pure-eyed beauty, could not 


88 


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refrain from touching impulsively upon the nub of 
her own unrest. 

“My dear/’ she said to Louise, passing a white 
and still prettily rounded arm around her daugh- 
ter, “do you hate your little mother?” 

Louise fought back the tears that suffused her 
eyes. 

“Why do you ask such a thing, dear?” she asked 
in a voice the hoarseness of which she strove to 
disguise. 

Her mother did not reply to the question, but 
went on, turning her head away: 

“Because there are circumstances, conditions 
that you can’t have failed to notice here that may- 
be — ” She struggled for words. “It has never 
been in my heart to do anything except what was 
right and fair by you, child, but one drifts, drifts, 
always drifts ” 

She could not proceed. 

Louise wrapped her arms about her mother. 
Neither spoke for a space. 

“Nothing can ever change me, dear,” said 
Louise then in her quiet tone. “It is not for me to 
judge or condemn. I can — wait. We shall not 
speak of it again, shall we, mother?” 

Her mother, haggard and with pain-drawn 
features, smoothed Louise’s face with her hand 
for a little while and went away without another 
word. The girl’s eyes were swollen when Laura 


THE EDDY 


89 


came for her in her car an hour later. But Laura 
did not ask her why. 

Louise went nowhere with her mother. Mrs. 
Treharne made it plain from the beginning that 
this was her intention. Louise, for her part, re- 
quired no reason. She understood. Nor did 
Louise seek to re-establish the friendships she had 
formed with girls at Miss Mayhew’s school, many 
of whom now were living in New York or visiting 
their homes there during the holiday vacation. 

One afternoon, at an opera matinee, Louise, 
strolling out the entr’acte in the foyer with Laura, 
came face to face with Bella Peyton, a girl who 
had been graduated from the finishing school with 
the class ahead of Louise’s. Miss Peyton was with 
her mother, a stony-eyed, granite-featured dowa- 
ger who had often met Louise on her frequent 
visits at the school; for her daughter and Louise 
had been school inseparables. 

Bella rushed up cordially to Louise and kissed 
her enthusiastically. 

“You darling!” she exclaimed in the abandon- 
ment of her delight at coming upon the chum of 
her school days so unexpectedly. “When did you 
reach town? And why didn’t you come to see me 
the very instant you returned?” 

Mrs. Peyton, who, at sight of Louise, had pur- 
posely lagged in the rear, and whose adamantine 
countenance reflected intensifying degrees of 


90 


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frozenness with each word that her daughter was 
saying to Louise, drew her adipose person into a 
posture of icy rigidity, and croaked : 

“Bella!” 

Mrs. Peyton had not so much as nodded tc 
Louise. 

“Why, mamma,” Bella broke out, “don’t you 
remember Louise Terharne, my sworn and sub- 
scribed and vowed and vummed chum at Miss 
Mayhew’s?” 

“Bella!” 

This time it was not merely an adjuration, it was 
a command. 

Bella, perceiving then that something was 
wrong, flushed. But she was loyal to her friend. 

“You are coming to see me immediately, dear?” 
she said, hurriedly shaking hands with Louise in 
order to obey her mother’s command. 

“Bella! Come to me at once!” Mrs. Peyton 
croaked with cutting, unconscionable rudeness, 
seizing her daughter by the arm and incontinently 
marching her off. 

Louise, crimsoning, took the stab without a 
word. 

“The tabby!” broke out Laura, her eyes flashing 
with indignation. “Gracious heaven, is it any won- 
der that men privately sneer at the way women 
treat each other? Don’t you mind the shocking 
old cat, Louise; she’ll tear herself to pieces with 


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91 


her own claws some day;” and Laura was un- 
usually tender and kind in her treatment of Louise 
for the remainder of the afternoon. But, after 
that encounter, Louise learned to avoid meeting 
her school friends when, as occasionally happened, 
she saw them before they caught sight of her. She 
felt that they all “knew” or “would know,” and 
she did not elect to take chances on additional 
snubs. 

Her first formal meeting with Judd had been a 
trial. It had been an accidental encounter, hap- 
pening about a week after Louise’s return from 
school, and at a time when Mrs. Treharne was in 
more than one mind as to whether she would per- 
mit Louise to meet Judd at all. Mrs. Treharne 
and Judd were stepping out of the huge yellow 
car at the close of their late afternoon ride just 
at the moment when Louise, alone, was returning 
in Laura’s car. Their meeting on the pavement 
was inevitable. For a moment Louise hoped that 
her mother would permit her to lag behind on pre- 
tense of returning to Laura’s car to find some 
imaginary forgotten article; but Mrs. Treharne, 
suddenly deciding that the meeting had best be 
over with, since no way of avoiding it, sooner or 
later, had suggested itself, called to her; and 
Louise, very beautiful with her cold-ruddied cheeks 
nimbussed by her breeze-blown hair of bronze, 
walked erect to where her mother stood with the 


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bulky, red-eyed Judd, who regarded Louise with 
a stare of disconcerting admiration. 

“My dear Louise,” said Mrs. Treharne, ob- 
viously quelling a certain tremulousness in her 
tone, “permit me to present Mr. Judd; Mr. Judd, 
my daughter Louise.” 

Judd, his mouth still unpleasantly agape, started 
the preliminary gesture toward extending his hand. 
But he made no further progress with the hand, 
for he was quick to notice that Louise, at that very 
instant, was inserting her loose right hand in her 
muff. Louise bowed and then returned to Laura’s 
car in quest of the imaginary article; she desired 
to give Judd time to resume his place in his car 
before she joined her mother on the steps. 

“Demmed handsome, that daughter of yours,” 
Judd commented on Louise to Mrs. Terharne 
when he saw her the next afternoon, “but — er — 
uppish, what?” 

“I can dispense with your generalities on that 
subject,” Mrs. Treharne had replied. 

After that Louise had met Judd casually in the 
wide, fire-lit down-stairs hall on two or three occa- 
sions, and once at the only one of her mother’s 
extraordinary Sunday night receptions — the “sa- 
lon” which at once provoked and amused Laura — 
which she attended; but she had exchanged no 
word with him. She was not lacking in diplomacy, 
but there were some stultifications that she found 


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to be wholly beyond her; and she was conscious 
of a certain previouslyunexperienced difficulty with 
her neck when she even inclined her head to Judd. 

“Would you care to meet some of my Sunday 
night people, Louise?” her mother had asked her. 
“I dare say Laura has told you they are freaks. 
Perhaps some of them are. But there are clever 
ones among them, and one must take the gifted 
with the mediocre. It would not harm you to 
meet a few of them. They are not wicked. They 
only think they are; some of them, that is. Their 
wickedness is an amiable abstraction. Shall you 
be down?” 

It was on a Sunday morning, in Louise’s apart- 
ments, that Mrs. Treharne made the suggestion. 
Louise was conscious of the need of a' laugh, even 
if it were a politely smothered one; and Laura had 
comically depicted her mother’s “salon” to her. 
She told her mother that she had been waiting for 
that invitation, which caused Mrs. Treharne to 
glance sharply at her to ascertain if Louise already 
had adopted Laura’s point of view as to the Sun- 
day evening gatherings. 

“Do you entertain your people yourself, mother, 
or is there a — ” Louise stumbled on the word 
“host.” 

But her mother was quick to catch her meaning. 

“I should not ask you down, else, my dear — you 


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should credit me that far,” she had replied, a tinge 
of reproach in her tone. And so, an hour or so 
after dinner on Sunday night, Louise, willowy yet 
full-blossomed and splendid in a simple princesse 
dress of white broadcloth, a gardenia nestling in 
an embrasure of her velvety auburn hair, and a 
tiny-linked chain of gold, with aquamarine pen- 
dants — a gift from Laura — around her firm white 
neck, went, for the first time since she had been 
in the house, to the already crowded main floor. 

Louise, in her inexperience, could not know that 
the gathering really was little less than an apotheo- 
sis of the declasee; she merely found some of the 
people agreeable, others of them unconsciously 
nai've in their ebullient enthusiasm over their imag- 
inary achievements or accomplishments, still others 
frankly laughable for their indurated habit of self 
laudation. 

It was in the main, so far as its social side went, 
an assemblage of persons, men and women, who, 
thrust outside the genuine social breastworks for 
various and more or less highly-tinctured lapses, 
thus foregathered in response to an instinct of 
gregariousness — an instinct around which the 
“birds of a feather” aphorism no doubt was 
framed. Having no choice in the matter, these 
persons were willing to accept the shadow for the 
reality. It might almost be said that on every 
uptown square of New York there is at least one 


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95 


common meeting point for similar assemblages of 
social exiles. Nearly all of the figurantes in Mrs. 
Treharne’s Sunday evening affairs were divorcees 
of more or less note; the “cases” of some of whom 
had been blazoned in huge red block type in the 
yellow newspapers, and “illustrated,” in default of 
genuine portraits, with blurred “cuts” of no less 
benevolent or redoubtable females than the late 
Mrs. Pinkham or Carrie Nation. The men in the 
company who had not already rocketed through 
the divorce court were willing, it appeared from 
their frank method of expressing themselves, to 
make that by no means perilous passage; though 
there was a sprinkling of younger men, still factors 
in a social world from which there are no volun- 
tary expatriates, who attended Mrs. Treharne’s 
Sunday evening affairs in a spirit of larkishness and 
glad of the chance to forsake, for a little while, 
regions more austere and still under the domina- 
tion of at least a tacit repression. 

For the rest, there were poetasters who fidgetted 
until they were called upon, out of pure sympathy, 
to read their own verse — some of the latter obvi- 
ously “lifted;” temperamental musicians, male and 
female, who preferred to sway at or with their 
instruments with the rooms darkened while they 
performed; manufacturers and proselytizers of 
personally-conducted and generally quite unintelli- 
gible cults, physical, moral or ethical, all of the 


96 


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cults extending a maximum of “freedom of action” 
to the individual; devisers of impromptu or extem- 
poraneous religions or near-religions, none of 
which boasted so inconvenient a restriction as a 
Decalogue; fashionable or striving-to-be-fashion- 
able palmists and chiromancers, “swamis,” 
“yogis;” burnoosed, sullen, white-robed exploiters, 
from the Near or Far East, of women who mis- 
took their advanced symptoms of neuresthenia for 
a hankering for the occult; and the other unclassi- 
fied, sycophantic factors of a “Bohemianism” 
whose seams were perfectly visible to the naked 
eye and whose sawdust was only held in place with 
the all-together co-operation of the whole artificial 
assemblage. 

Louise’s entrance upon the scene created a stir 
which caused her to feel distinctly uncomfortable. 
She longed for Laura; but Laura had “sworn off” 
attending Mrs. Treharne’s Sunday evening parties; 
not from any selfish motives of caution — for Laura 
was in keen demand in the social circle in which 
she had been born and reared; but simply because 
she had at length ceased to extract amusement 
from the self-idolizing vagaries of Mrs. Tre- 
harne’s crew; more briefly still, because they bored 
her to extinction. 

When the word was buzzed around among the 
slowly-moving, chatttering assemblage to whom 
the entire lower floor of the house, including the 


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97 


conservatory, had been thrown open — that “the 
tall girl with the air and the hair” was Mrs. Tre- 
harne’s daughter — the more privileged ones ad- 
verted to their hostess as Tony — there was a sud- 
den cluttering of the passageways leading to the 
room in which Louise was standing with her 
mother. In their keenness to catch a glimpse of 
the “just-bloomed daughter of Tony” many of 
them even forsook the long and generously-pro- 
vided buffet, than which no greater sign of a con- 
suming interest or curiosity could be given; for not 
a few of the raffish guests appeared to be so 
patently in need of nourishment — and stimulant — 
that they spent the major portion of the evening 
at the buffet. 

A woman whose vision seemed to be slightly 
filmed from her inordinate devotion to the punch 
lifted her glass, after studying Louise in a sort of 
open-mouthed daze for a moment or so, and sang 
out, in a tone that she apparently had some diffi- 
culty in controlling : 

“To Tony’s daughter — the Empress Louise !” 

The men and women in her neighborhood 
grabbed for glasses to fill from the punchbowls and 
took up the refrain: 

“The Empress Louise !” 

Louise felt the blood swirling to her head, but 
she braced herself to stand the volleying of eyes. 
Her mother was intensely annoyed and made not 


98 


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the least effort to conceal her annoyance. When 
the incident had been merged in a diversion afford- 
ed by a recitation of a Portuguese madrigal in 
another room by a man with unkempt hair and 
untidy fingernails, Mrs. Treharne glided away 
from Louise’s side for a moment and found the 
woman who had proposed the toast. She was still 
absorbedly busy at the buffet. 

“You are to leave at once, Ethel,” she said in 
a low but determined tone to the toast-proposer, a 
woman whose divorce story in the newspapers had 
been remarkable for the detailed account of liquid 
refreshments she had consumed up and down the 
world, at foreign hotels and on board yachts, for 
a number of years at a stretch. “I shall never- 
forgive you if you make another scene here.” 

“All right, Tony,” the woman replied, with a 
vacuous smile. “Not angry at me, are you, for 
wishing luck to your little girl — your big girl, I 
mean; she is an empress, you know, and — ” 

Mrs. Treharne guided her to the cloak room 
and stayed by her side until she bade her good- 
night at the door. 

Louise, in the meantime, had been approached 
by a man whose eyes, she had noticed with a cer- 
tain vague disquietude, had been following her 
about since her entrance upon the scene. 

He was a handsome man of the florid type, with 
a sweeping blonde mustache and oddly-restless 


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99 


light brown eyes in which Louise, catching him de- 
vouring her with his gaze at frequent intervals, 
nervously thought that she detected certain feline- 
ly-topaz glints. He was tall and a trifle over- 
heavy; but there was a certain slow-moving, easy 
air of adventitious distinction about him which 
might have been in part lent by the immaculate- 
ness of his evening clothes and his facile way of* 
disposing of his hands without requiring any arti- 
cle to give them employment; an art in which even 
practiced courtiers and carpet knights occasionally 
are deficient. Louise did not like his face; she 
observed, when she saw, not without a certain 
vague trepidation, that he was approaching her, 
that his over-red and over-full lips, from which 
the sweeping mustache was brushed away, were 
curved in a sort of habitual sneer which by no 
stretch of charity could be called a smile; though 
that, no doubt, was the desired intent of it. 

He bowed low, keeping his eyes upraised on 
Louise’s face, when he reached her side, and said: 

“Miss Treharne?” 

Louise, used to more formal methods of meeting 
new men, inclined her head. 

“You will condone, I hope, Miss Treharne, 
my seeming breach of formality in presuming to 
address you without a presentation,” he said, even 
his intensified smile failing to efface the sneering 
curve from his too visible lips. “But your mother 


100 


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is generous enough to permit her guests at times 
— on such occasions as these, for example — to 
forego formality. I have been ineffectually trying 
to reach her for an hour in order to — ” 

“In order to ask me to do that which you have 
already done,” said Mrs. Treharne, with quite 
unusual affability, coming up at that moment and 
catching his final words. “Louise, dear, permit 
me — Mr. Langdon Jesse. Don’t expect her to 
know, Mr. Jesse, that you are a cotton king. I 
doubt if her routine at school permitted her to 
read the newspapers, even if they interested her; 
which I sincerely hope they did not and will not.” 

Louise had not often seen her mother in so 
gracious a humor toward any man; but this fact: 
did not in any sense serve to quell the instinctive 
dislike which she immediately felt for Jesse, the 
“cotton king” of her mother’s somewhat too pur- 
posely-significant introduction. She noticed that 
his hands were small and obtrusively white; that 
there was a wave in his burnished blonde hair; 
that his large clear-cut features were of a chiselled 
regularity; and her natural aversion to the merely 
handsome man promptly asserted itself. The 
sneer of his mouth, and his fixed way of gazing 
squarely into her eyes as if his own eyes were 
forming a question, disquieted her. She replied 
in purposed monosyllables to his rather trivial yet 
studied questions about her school life. She knew 


THE EDDY 


101 


perfectly well that he was in no wise interested in 
her school life, but that he merely was seeking 
what he considered might be the most engaging 
method of capturing her attention. Five minutes 
after his meeting with her she devised an excuse 
and went to her apartments. She threw her 
windows wide and let the wintry air bulge the 
curtains when she reached her sleeping room; 
perhaps it was her subconsciousness that told her 
that she needed some such a bath of purifying air 
to obliterate what intangible traces there might 
remain of her brief contact with Langdon Jesse. 
That night she dreampt persistently of a leopard 
with large, blazing eyes of topaz; and an hour 
after she awoke a large basket of superb orchids, 
with Langdon Jesse’s card attached, was brought 
to her. Laura was with her at the time. 

“FromLangdon Jesse ?” saidLaura,knittingher 
brow. “Did you meet him last night, Louise?” 

“Yes. I disliked him intensely.” 

“If I were you, dear,” suggested Laura, “I 
should send these orchids to a hospital. They can 
of course have no sinister effect upon those who 
have not met their donor. But I should be afraid 
to have you keep any flowers sent you by Langdon 
Jesse. They might poison the air. The bald 
impudence of him in sending you flowers at all !” 

A footman was carrying the orchids to a near- 
by hospital five minutes later. 


CHAPTER V 

L ANGDON JESSE and his one-time asso- 
ciate and co-partner in lamb-shearing 
“deals,” Frederick Judd, met at luncheon 
in a restaurant in the financial district a few days 
later. 

Judd, one of the powers of “the Street,” was 
past fifty-five, and he had no great toleration for 
the vacuities of young men. This fact, however, 
placed no inhibition on the admiration — it could 
scarcely be called a liking — which he felt for Lang- 
don Jesse; for Jesse, whatever else he may 
have been, certainly was not vacuous in the 
matter of business; and it was from the angle of 
their success in business that Judd exclusively 
judged men. Jesse, well under forty, already was 
a veteran of the stock market; and on at least 
one occasion he had deftly “trimmed” no less a 
person than his former associate, Mr. Judd; 
wherefore Judd, with the breadth of vision of the 
financial general in considering the strategy of the 
general who has beaten him, admired Jesse, who 


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103 


had been virtually his pupil, all the more ; resolv- 
ing, at the same time, not to permit his quondam 
pupil to “trim” him again. 

Jesse, accepting the nodded invitation, took a 
seat at the table at which Judd, alone, was eating 
his heavy luncheon. They exchanged market talk 
in brief, brittle phrases, for a while. Then Jesse, 
his too-prominent lips curving, and seeming to 
be gazing over the top of Judd’s bare poll, said: 

“Sumptious, isn’t she?” 

Judd, used to Jesse’s adversions to the sump - 1 
tuosity of women — many women — went on dog- 
gedly eating. After a space he replied with a mon- 
osyllable : 

“Who?” 

Jesse did not answer for a moment; nor did 
Judd seem to be particularly worried over that 
fact. 

“I dropped into your — er — your place on the 
Drive on Sunday night,” said Jesse, fastening an 
abnormally long cigarette into a remarkably long 
cigarette holder of amber and gold. 

Judd, his fork poised in the air, looked up at 
Jesse. There was a question in his red-rimmed 
eyes; but Judd made it a point not to submit ques- 
tions of any consequence until he had turned them 
over in his mind several times. 

“So I heard,” said Judd, with no obvious in- 
terest, pronging away again with his fork. 


104 


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“Who told you,” asked Jesse, with a sharp 
glance at Judd. “Not ” 

“How the devil should I remember who told 
me?” replied Judd in a matter-of-fact tone. 
“What’s the difference who told me, anyhow?” 

But it made considerable difference, as a matter 
of fact, to Jesse; his self-satisfaction and his serene 
belief in his ability to make an immediate “impres- 
sion” were very great; and when Judd told him 
he had “heard” he had been at the Riverside 
Drive house he took it for granted that Judd had 
“heard” it from the person on whom his thoughts 
were dwelling; Louise Treharne, that is to 
say. 

“Oh, no particular difference,” said Jesse, blow- 
ing a cloud of acrid Turkish cigarette smoke at 
Judd, which caused Judd to scowl. “I thought 
perhaps ” 

Judd knew perfectly well what he thought; but 
Judd often failed even to mention things that he 
knew perfectly well. 

“You take in those bear-garden affairs at Tony’s 
— at Mrs. Treharne’s,” catching himself, “right 
along, don’t you?” said Judd. “How the devil 
you can endure that pack of imbecile, loquacious 
what-are-theys is more than I can make out. One 
of those Sundays nights cured me.” 

Jesse, however, had not the least intention of 
being side-tracked. 


THE EDDY 


105 


“Well, she is — er — well, ripping; isn’t she?” he 
said, after a pause. 

Judd, perceiving the futility of evasion, gave 
way. 

“Yes — if that’s what you want me to say — and 
all ice, besides,” said Judd. “You’re up against 
it there, son,” he went on, judicially. “Or are 
you looking for a death by freezing? Why, I’m 
afraid that she’s going to fracture one of her up- 
per vertebrae even when she nods to me! And 
that’s all the recognition she ever gives me — a 
nod.” 

“She doesn’t strike me as being so hopelessly 
Arctic as all that,” said Jesse, inordinately proud 
of what he considered his keen judgment of wo- 
men. “Did you ever happen to meet a woman 
with auburn hair who possessed a — er — a frozen 
or freezing temperament? And, by the way, why 
do you dwell upon her rigidity, so to speak, when 
she nods ‘even to you?’ Why ‘even to you?’ ” 

Judd, a little choler showing in his purpling 
face, broke out: 

“Because a man naturally expects a little man- 
ners, a little common politeness, from people he’s 
taking care of, doesn’t he? She’s living in my 
house, by God!” 

“That,” said Jesse, quietly, “is precisely what 
I am getting at: since she is living in your house 
— if she knows it is your house — she can’t be so — 


106 


THE EDDY 


er — well, stupendously straight-laced, can she ? 
And, by frozen, of course you meant straight- 
laced.” 

“I meant exactly what I said,” replied Judd, 
sulkily. “Stop twisting my words around, will 
you? I said that she was ice, and that is what I 
meant to say. You’re on a blind trail, Jesse, if 
that’s what you’re getting at. Take it from me. 
You’re a hit with ’em, I know, and all that sort 
of rot. But this one is more than your match. 
She’ll shrivel you good and plenty if you try any- 
thing on with her. At that, why can’t you let her 
alone? There are plenty of the other kind — 
your kind. What’s the matter, anyhow? Have 
all the show girls moved out of New York?” 

Jesse didn’t relish the slap. It was not exactly 
a truthful slap, moreover. Jesse had withdrawn 
his devotions to “show girls” several years be- 
fore; since doing which he had quarried in en- 
tirely different quarters. 

“Let the girl alone — that’s my advice,” went 
on Judd, seized for the moment by a flickering 
sense of fairness. “I don’t fancy her particularly 
— because she’s so damned haughty with me, I 
suppose, and looks down upon me from a moun- 
tain. But she’s all right. I know that, and I’m 
telling it to you for your information. Better 
forget it. There isn’t a chance on earth for you, 
anyhow.” 


THE EDDY 


107 


Jesse didn’t appear to be in the least thrown 
off the quest by the advice. 

“Are you sure,” he inquired of Judd after a 
short silence, “that she knows just where you 
figure in the Riverside Drive establishment?” 

“Well, you could see for yourself that she is 
more than seven years of age, couldn’t you?” 
briefly replied Judd. 

“But,” observed Jesse, obviously seeking to get 
hold of all of the threads of the situation, “she is 
only recently out of school, I understand, and per- 
haps she hasn’t yet fully grasped ” 

“I don’t know what she has grasped, and I don’t 
care a damn,” thrust in Judd, tired of the colloquy. 
“She must know a good deal about the way things 
stand or she wouldn’t treat me as if I were rub- 
bish. I can see how I stick in her throat. When 
it comes to that, why shouldn’t I? She’s only a 
schoolgirl, if she is a head taller than I am. Her 
mother made an idiotic mistake in having the girl 
around the place. But that’s none of my affair. 
I take the game as it stands. Only I advise you 
to stand clear. You might as well be decent for 
once in your life. Unless, of course,” and Judd 
shot a glance of inquiry at Jesse, “you mean to 
turn respectable — it’s about time — and go in for 
the marrying idea?” 

Jesse’s somewhat waxy, excessively smooth face 
flushed at Judd’s afterthought. 


108 


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“I marry?” he said, with a distinctly dis- 
agreeable laugh. “Well, it may come to that, 
some day or other. But can you see me marry- 
ing the daughter of your acknowledged ” 

He fumbled for the word; “mistress” was what 
he wanted to say, but he discarded it out of sheer 
timidity; “ — your acknowledged companion?” he 
finished. 

“Be good enough to keep out of my personal 
affairs, Jesse,” said Judd, coldly. “I don’t 
dip into your private concerns. You may take 
my advice or leave it. But you want to go pretty 
slow, if you’re asking me. Nobody has yet for- 
gotten that West Indian affair of yours; just re- 
member that.” 

With Judd, one shot called for another. Jesse 
gave a start and paled slightly at Judd’s allusion 
to “the West Indian affair.” Judd waited only 
long enough to see that the shot found its mark; 
then, with an amused leer, he rose from the table, 
his luncheon finished, and lumbered away with a 
nod. 

Jesse, discarding his cigarette, bit off the end 
of a cigar and fumed. The “West Indian affair” 
was a sore subject with him solely because the 
world knew all about it. He had not the least 
feeling of self-condemnation over it; it was the 
thought that, for once, he had been found out 
that caused him to rage internally when the matter 


THE EDDY 


109 


was adverted to ; for the newspapers had been full 
of it at the time of the occurrence. 

“The West Indian affair,” Jesse well knew, had 
not been forgotten, as Judd had said, nor was it 
likely to be forgotten. It threw a raking light upon 
his general attitude toward and his treatment of 
women. A year before, after one of his periodi- 
cal triumphs in the cotton market, in which, to 
quote the newspapers’ way of putting it, he had 
“cleaned up millions,” Jesse had made a mid- 
winter cruise of the West Indies on his yacht. A 
girl of unusual beauty, whom he had met by acci- 
dent on an automobile tour on Long Island, had 
been his companion on the cruise. She was in- 
experienced, of humble parentage, and he had 
overborne her objections by vaguely intimating 
something as to a marriage when they should 
arrive in the West Indies. She had protested 
when, upon the yacht’s touching at many ports, 
he had of course shown not the least inclination 
to make good his merely intimated promise; and, 
in his wrath over her attitude, he had not only 
committed the indefensible crime, but he had made 
the stupendous mistake, viewed from the politic 
point of view, of deserting the girl in a West In- 
dian city, without money or resources, without 
even her clothing, and sailing back to New York 
alone. 

The girl, thus stranded amid new and un- 


110 


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friendly surroundings, had but one resource — the 
American consul. The consul provided for her 
passage back to New York. The correspondents 
of the New York newspapers in the West Indian 
city had got hold of the details, adding a few 
neatly whimsical touches of their own, and for 
days the newspapers had reeked with the story. 
There had been talk of prosecuting Jesse for ab- 
duction, but he had employed the underground 
method, rendered easily available to him owing 
to his wealth, to smother that suggestion. But the 
grisly affair had thrown a cloud over Jesse from 
which he knew, raging as he knew it, there was 
no emerging. Several of his clubs — the good ones 
— had dropped him; men and women of the world 
to which he aspired, and in which he had been 
making progress, cut him right and left; his name 
had been erased from most of the worth-while 
invitation lists; and the hole in his armor was 
wide open to the shafts of the kind Judd had just 
discharged at him. 

Jesse sat at the table and gnawed angrily 
at his unlighted cigar for a long time after 
Judd had gone; it was characteristic of him that 
his compunction was all for himself. He had 
been found out and pilloried. That was what cut 
him. He never gave a thought to the young 
woman whose life he had destroyed. 

Jesse had been instantly struck by the beauty 


THE EDDY 


ill 


of Louise Treharne. He surmised that it was 
through no complaisance on her part, but purely 
because she had been helpless in the matter, that 
she had found herself living with her ostracised 
mother in the house on the Drive. That situation, 
he was confident, had been thrust upon her. But 
this consideration, and the additional one that she 
was, as he could not have failed to note, nobly 
undergoing the ordeal, which might have aroused 
the admiration and excited the sympathy of a 
man of merely average fairness, had touched no 
compassionate chord in Langdon Jesse. Adopting 
the trivial and far-fetched methods of analysis 
which are employed by men who consider them- 
selves expert in their knowledge of women, he 
had calmly concluded that in all likelihood Louise 
Treharne’s manner was a skillfully-studied pose. 
At any rate he meant to find out. He meant to 
“know her better.” It was thus that his determi- 
nation framed itself in his mind; he would “know 
her better.” 

In gaining the attention of women, he believed 
in the gentle siege and then the grand assault; it 
was, in truth, the only “system” with which he had 
any familiarity, and it had generally proved suc- 
cessful. 

Jesse returned to his office, summoned his car, 
went to his suite at the Plaza, gave himself over 
to the grooming activities of his man for an 


112 


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hour; then, resuming his car, he went to the house 
on Riverside Drive. 

Louise, in brown walking suit and brown tur- 
ban, her cheeks ruddy from a long and rapid walk 
from one end of the Park to the other, had just 
returned when Jesse’s card was brought up. She 
was studying the card, trying to devise an excuse 
— for she shrank from the thought of seeing him 
— when her mother, ready for her motor airing, 
entered the room. 

“I just caught sight of Mr. Jesse’s car from my 
window,” said Mrs. Treharne to Louise. Louise 
observed that her mother was in the same flut- 
tered state that she had been in when she had 
found Jesse talking to her on the previous Sunday 
night. “He has sent his card to you? Of course 
you are going to see him?” 

“I think I shall not see him, mother,” said Lou- 
ise, ringing for Heloise with the purpose of send- 
ing word that she was indisposed, not at home — 
anything. 

Mrs. Treharne looked annoyed and there was 
irritation in her question: 

“Why not, my dear?” 

“I don’t care for him, mother,” said Louise, 
frankly. “In fact, I believe I rather dislike him. 
Do you think he is the sort of man I should 
meet?” 


THE EDDY 


113 


Louise was intensely disappointed that her 
mother should care to have her meet Jesse. She 
tried to assure herself that her mother did not 
know or realize the character of the man as she 
herself had heard it briefly described by Laura; 
but she found that a bit difficult to believe. 

“Tell me, please, Louise, why you ask me such 
a question as that,” said Mrs. Treharne, irritated- 
ly. “What do you know about Mr. Jesse? Who 
has been telling you things about him?” 

Louise, remaining silent, plainly showed that 
she did not care to answer her mother’s question. 

“It was Laura, no doubt,” went on Mrs. Tre- 
harne. “Laura, I begin to fear, is growing gar- 
rulous. You must not permit her to put absurd 
ideas into your head, my dear. I must speak to 
her about it.” 

“Pray do not, mother,” said Louise, earnestly. 
“She is one of the dearest women in the world, 
and everything that she tells me, I know, is not 
only perfectly true, but for my good. It is not 
anything said to me by Laura that makes me dis- 
like the idea of receiving Mr. Jesse. It is simply 
that I don’t like him. There is a boldness, an ef- 
frontery, a cynicism, about him that make me dis- 
trust him. I don’t care for his type of man. That 
is all.” 

“You must not fall into the habit of forming 
sudden prejudices, my dear,” said her mother, 


114 


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diplomatically assuming an air of grave persua- 
siveness. “Mr. Jesse no doubt has had his fling at 
life. What worth-while man of his age hasn’t? 
But he is a man of mark. He has made his way 
as few men have. Of course you found him hand- 
some, distingue? Most women do, my dear. And 
I could see that he was greatly struck with you. 
You will soon be twenty, Louise; and Mr. Jesse, 
perhaps I should remind you, is a great parti.” 

Louise felt herself crimsoning. Her mother 
did know Jesse’s record, then. That was manifest 
from her words. And yet she was calmly exalting 
him as an “eligible!” 

The girl so shrank from having any further 
conversation with her mother on the subject just 
then that she turned to her and said: 

“I would not see him of my own volition, 
mother; but if you very much wish it, I shall see 
him.” 

“For heaven’s sake, Louise, don’t look so ter- 
ribly austere and crushed over it!” broke out Mrs. 
Treharne. “The man will not kidnap you! I 
very much wish that you should be sensible and 
receive eligible men, of course. Isn’t that a per- 
fectly natural wish?” 

Louise, without another word, not stopping to 
remove her turban or even glance in the glass, 
went down-stairs to receive Jesse. Her mother 
fluttered past the drawing-room door a moment 


THE EDDY 


115 


later, merely stopping for a word of over-effusive 
greeting to Jesse before joining the waiting Judd 
in his car. Jesse, whether by accident or from 
foreknowledge, had timed his visit well. He was 
quite alone on the floor with Louise Treharne. 
She caught the gleam of his upraised eyes and 
noted the bold persistence of the question in them 
when, still in his fur overcoat, he turned from the 
contemplation of a picture to greet her. 

“Ah,” he said with an attempt at airiness, slip- 
ping out of the overcoat and extending his hand, 
“our Empress already has been out?” glancing 
at her turban and her wind-freshened cheeks. 
“That is unfortunate. I was about to place my car 
at her disposal ” 

He withdrew his hand, not seeming to notice 
that Louise had failed to see it. 

“Yes, I have been walking,” put in Louise, in 
no wise stiffly, but with an air of preoccupied 
withdrawal which she genuinely felt. “As to what 
you call me, I believe I should prefer to be known 
by my name.” 

Jesse, remembering what Judd had said as to 
the likelihood of his being frozen or shrivelled, 
laughed inwardly. He rather enjoyed being re- 
buffed by women — at first. It made the game 
keener. None of them, he remembered now with 
complaisancy, continued to rebuff him for very 
long. 


116 


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“Pardon me, Miss Treharne,” he said, with a 
certain languishing air which Louise found even 
more offensive than his initial familiarity. “I 
thought, when the title was so spontaneously ap- 
plied to you on Sunday night, that perhaps you 
found it agreeable. But it is difficult to gauge — 
women.” He dwelt upon the word “women,” 
thinking that, considering how recently she had 
left school, it might flatter her. 

Louise chose to talk commonplaces. Her bed- 
rock genuineness made it impossible for her to af- 
fect an interest in a visitor which she did not feel. 
And her lack of interest in Jesse was complicated 
by her growing dislike for him. 

“I am doubly disappointed,” said Jesse after 
a pause which he did not find embarrassing. Noth- 
ing embarrassed Jesse when he had his mind defi- 
nitely set upon a purpose. “First, I had hoped, 
as I say, that, not having been out, you would 
honor me by accepting the use of my car. Second, 
I am desolated because you are wearing a hat. 
I had been promising myself another glimpse of 
your superb hair. Is it banal to put it that 
way? I am afraid so. But consider the tempta- 
tion! Was it Aspasia or Cleopatra whose hair 
was of the glorious shade of yours — or both?” 

“Mr. Jesse,” said Louise, now quite degage, 
facing him squarely and speaking with the greatest 
deliberation, “I seem to find, from my two limited 


THE EDDY 


117 


conversations with you, that you are suffering 
under some sort of a misapprehension as to me. 
You will discover that yourself, I think, if you 
will take the trouble to recur to several things you 
already have said to me after an acquaintanceship, 
all told, of perhaps ten minutes. Suppose we 
seek a less personal plane? I am too familiar 
with my hair to care to have it made a subject of 
extended remarks on the part of men whom I 
scarcely know. There are less pointed themes. 
Permit me to suggest that we occupy ourselves 
in finding them.” 

“By God, a broadside!” said Jesse to himself, 
not in the least abashed; his admiration always 
grew for women who trounced him — at first. “I 
didn’t think she had it in her! And Judd, the fat 
imbecile, called her an iceberg! She is a volca- 
no !” 

Aloud, he said, with a neatly-assumed air of 
subjection and penitence: 

“Well delivered, Miss Treharne. But I merit 
it. I have made the error of supposing — ” 

“That my comparatively recent return from 
school, and the open-mindedness naturally asso- 
ciated with that,” Louise quietly interrupted, 
“made me a fair target for your somewhat labored 
and not particularly apt compliments. Yes, you 
erred decisively there.” 

“Again!” thought Jesse, bubbling with finely- 


118 


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concealed delight. She is an empress right 
enough, whether she likes to be called that or not! 
What a prize!” 

Aloud, he said with an air of chastened gravity: 

“You do me scant justice there, Miss Treharne, 
but that is easily passed, seeing how chagrinedly 
conscious I am that I deserved your rebuke in the 
first instance. You are fond of motoring?” chang- 
ing the subject with no great deftness. 

“No,” replied Louise, sufficiently out of hand. 
“I don’t in the least care for it.” The conversa- 
tion was irksome to her and she would not pre- 
tend that it was not. 

“I inquired,” said Jesse, looking chapfallen 
though he did not in the least feel so, “because I 
had been hoping you might do me the honor to 
accept the use — the steady use — of one of my cars. 
I have several,” this last with an ostentation that 
rather sickened Louise. But she could not allow 
the carefully veiled suggestion in his words to 
pass. 

“Mr. Jesse,” she said, reverting to her tone of 
deliberation and again gazing straight at him, 
“aside from the fact that, as I have told you, 1 
don’t in the least care for motoring, will you be 
good enough to suggest to me just one fairly in- 
telligible reason why I should accept your proffer 
of the use — ‘the steady use’ — of one of your cars? 
It may be that you will have some reason to offer 


THE EDDY 


119 


for what, otherwise, I should deem a distinct im- 
pertinence.” 

Jesse’s eyes gleamed with the joy of it. “What 
a prize I” he thought again. 

“I seem, Miss Treharne,” he said with a laugh 
which he purposely made uneasy, “to be stum- 
bling upon one blunder after another. There is no 
reason for my having offered you the use of one 
of my cars — and I hasten to withdraw the offer, 
since it seems to offend you — other than my friend- 
ship of long standing with your mother and my 
desire — my hope, I was about to say — that you, 
too, might consider me worthy of your friendship.” 

It was rather adroitly turned, but it completely 
missed fire. 

“I don’t seem to recall that it is necessary for 
one to adopt one’s mother’s friends as one’s own,” 
said Louise, without the least hesitancy. His as- 
sumption of an easily-penetrated ingratiating man- 
ner had thoroughly disgusted her; she wanted him 
to take his departure; and she chose the most 
straightout means to that end. There was no pos- 
sible way for her to know that Jesse enjoyed the 
early taunts of some women much as he relished 
the cocktails with which he preceded his dinners, 
and for very much the same reason — they were 
appetizers. 

He rose with an air of irresolution which he 
was far from feeling. 


120 


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“I fear,” he said, resignedly, “that something 
has happened — or perhaps that something has 
been said — to predispose or prejudice you against 
me, Miss Treharne. It is a conclusion to which 
I am driven.” 

He paused, then faced her with an appearance 
of frankness which he was adept at assuming. 

“Miss Treharne,” he went on, cleverly adopting 
a tone with a tremolo note in it, “you will 
grant, I think, that men — men, that is to say, who 
cut any sort of figure in affairs” — a flourish here 
— “often are misjudged. Without in the least de- 
siring to pose as one who has been a victim of 

such misjudgment, I feel, nevertheless ” Here 

he stopped, having carefully calculated his stop- 
ping point, and, with impulsively extended hands, 
he went on with a beautifully acted semblance of 
real feeling: “Miss Treharne, I merely ask you 
to give me a chance to prove myself; a chance at 
least to wear the candidate’s stripes for your 
friendship.” 

Despite her youthfulness and her utter inex- 
perience with men of Jesse’s type, Louise, aided 
by an unusually subtle intuition, and mindful 
of what she had heard of Jesse, caught the 
hollow ring in his tone, detected the false 
shifty light in his now furtive, eager eyes. 

She rose. 

“You are quite overpoweringly in earnest over 


THE EDDY 


121 


what seems to me a very trivial matter, Mr. 
Jesse,” she said with a little laugh that sounded 
harsh even to her own ears. 

“You gravely underestimate the value of your 
friendship in calling it trivial, Miss Treharne,” 
said Jesse, rising also; for at length he was ready 
to accept the dismissal which a less thick-skinned 
man, even of his type, would have taken long be- 
fore. 

“I have not been in the habit of placing any 
sort of an appraisal upon the value of my friend- 
ship,” she replied, succinctly. 

He thrust his arms into the sleeves of his great- 
coat of fur and strolled, with a downcast air, to 
the drawing-room door. 

“This is not your normal mood, Miss Tre- 
harne,” he said, turning upon her a smile that he 
meant to be wan. “You see what unresentful jus- 
tice I do you. There are to be other days. I 
shall find you in a humor less inclined to magnify 
my candidly professed demerits. I hope to have 
an opportunity to prove to you that I have at least 
a few merits to balance the faults.” 

The hint was sufficiently broad, but Louise ap- 
peared to be momentarily obtuse. At any rate 
she did not extend the invitation he too patently 
fished for. Her reticence in that respect, how- 
ever, did not in the least abash Jesse. 

“At least I have the cheering knowledge that 


122 


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this door is open to me,” he said, entering the 
foyer on his way out. “Have I not?” 

Unavailingly Louise strove to steady herself 
in order to thrust back the color which she felt 
mounting to her face. 

“It is not my door,” she said in a low tone; 
and instantly was keenly sorry for having said it. 

“Oh, I quite understand that,” he said, with an 
air of lightness, though at the moment he did not 
dare to turn and look at her. “But it is all the 
same, since it is your mother’s, is it not?” 

She made no reply. She felt that she deserved 
the barb for having given him the opportunity to 
discharge it. He bowed low, essayed the smile 
that he considered his most engaging one, and 
went out to his waiting car. 

For the second time after having been in the 
presence of Langdon Jesse, Louise went to her 
rooms and threw all the windows wide ; then stood 
in the wintry eddies and permitted the cold, sweet 
air to enwrap and purify her. 

When Mrs. Treharne, after leaving Louise and 
Jesse together, stepped into the car with Judd, 
she found that adipose man of finance chuckling 
softly to himself. She deigned not to inquire of 
him the reason for his chuckling — knowing, of 
course, that presently he would be volunteering 
that information himself. 


THE EDDY 


123 


“That was Jesse’s car in front of the house, 
wasn’t it, Tony?” he asked her, still chuckling 
unpleasantly as the car pulled away from the curb. 

“Yes,” she replied, alert of a sudden, but dis- 
daining to appear so. 

“Jesse is calling to see — er — your daughter, 
eh?” Judd asked, continuing his rumbling manifes- 
tations of joviality. 

“He is,” replied Mrs. Treharne, carefully 
screening her impatience to catch Judd’s drift. 
“But I fail to see why that fact should incite you 
to give vent to such a harrowing series of low 
comedy chuckles.” 

“Quite so, quite so, my dear Antoinette,” said 
Judd, soothingly, but not in the least diminishing 
his choppy cachinnatory performance. 

Mrs. Treharne, with an air of disgust which 
merely screened her worried curiosity, permitted 
him to continue for a while. Then she said, with 
an air of gravity intended to drag him back to 
his naturally sullen state, but assumed also for 
the purpose of sounding him : 

“Jesse was plainly struck with Louise on Sunday 
night last. Her position now, of course, is 
hideous. Jesse may be the solution.” 

Judd straightened himself in his seat and sud- 
denly stopped chuckling. Then he glanced with 
quizzical keenness out of slitted eyes at his com- 
panion. 


124 


THE EDDY 


“Meaning, I suppose/’ he said, “that you have 
an idea that Jesse might take it into his head to 
marry her?” 

“What else could I mean?” she asked him 
huskily. 

“Quite so, quite so, my dear Antoinette,” said 
Judd, leaning back in his seat again. “Of course. 
Certainly. I fully understand you,” and he closed 
his eyes as if about to lapse into a refreshing nap. 

Mrs. Treharne, distinctly wrought up, grasped 
one of the lapels of his seal-lined greatcoat and 
shook him determinedly. 

“Be good enough to explain to me, and at once, 
precisely what you mean,” she said rapidly, a 
growing hoarseness in her tone. 

Judd, for his part, promptly relapsed into his 
chuckling. 

“It is nothing, my dear — nothing at all, I as- 
sure you,” he said, between wheezes. “Only it 
strikes me as rather diverting that anybody should 
consider Jesse in the light of a matrimonial eligi- 
ble. When, by the way, did you gather the idea 
that Jesse was a marrying man? Since that — er — 
somewhat widely-exploited little affair of his in 
the West Indies last year? Or more recently?” 

Judd generally won in the little skirmishes they 
had in the motor car. The fact that he had won 
again was plainly indicated by the fact that she 
remained silent for the remainder of the ride. 


CHAPTER VI 


L OUISE, still bound by the discipline of 
school, was not a late sleeper. As early 
as seven o’clock on the morning following 
Langdon Jesse’s call she was lying awake, striving 
to dispel, by the process of optimistic reasoning, 
the sinister nimbus that seemed to be enshrouding 
her, when the telephone bell in her dressing room 
began to ring persistently. Louise sprang up to 
answer the call. 

“I know it is a barbarous hour, dear,” Laura’s 
cheerful contralto came over the wire, “but I’ve 
just been aroused from my juvenile slumbers by 
the telephone, and of course I must have revenge 
upon somebody. Listen, dear : I know that it only 
takes you about fifteen minutes to dress — of 
course you are not dressed yet? Well, begin this 
instant. Put on something for tramping and fuss- 
ing around in the country. You must be over here 
by eight o’clock. We are going to have a romp- 
ing day in the country. Now, hurry, won’t you?” 

“Just you and I, Laura?” asked Louise, de- 
lighted. A day in the country! Open fields to 
dispel vapors ! The thought of it made her eager 
and excited. 


126 


THE EDDY 


“No, there’ll be another,” replied Laura. “I 
disregard the axiom, you know, that ‘Three is a 
crowd.’ Three needn’t be a crowd if one of the 
three has a little tact and — and the knack of 
opportunely vanishing,” and Louise heard her 
soft laughter. “A man I know has what he calls 
a little tumbledown place, with some ground 
around it, over in Jersey. He calls it Sullen 
Manor, because he says he always goes over there, 
in preference to all other places, when he feels 
the imperative need to sulk. Now, there is not 
another moment to be wasted in ’phoning. Start 
to dress this very instant! Will you solemnly 
promise me to be here on the stroke of eight? 
Very well. I shall be waiting. Goodbye.” 

Louise, “very trig and complete,” as Laura 
remarked, in a suit of grey with a matching fur- 
trimmed grey toque, was with the astonished 
Laura a good quarter of an hour before eight. 

“Heaven knows how you do it,” said Laura, 
still in the hands of her maid. “Go into the dining- 
room and have some coffee, dear. I shall be with 
you directly.” 

Louise, humming happily at the thought of the 
care-free day ahead of her, sped into the bright 
dining room. John Blythe, sipping coffee at the 
table, rose to meet her. He looked fine and up- 
standing in his fresh, rough tweeds, his close- 
shaven face ruddy and his clear grey eyes showing 


THE EDDY 


127 


an agate sparkle from the brisk walk to Laura’s 
apartment from his own. 

Louise halted abruptly in her astonishment 
when she saw him. But she was extremely glad 
to see him and said so frankly, resting her hand in 
his muscular but gentle clasp for a moment. 

“Laura packed me off here to take some cof- 
fee,” she said. “Does she know you are here? 
And how early you are abroad in the world. We 
are stirring about at this sunrise hour because we 
are going for a day in the country — and I am mad 
to get there ! In my previous incarnation I must 
have been a milkmaid, for I dearly love the 
country.” Then she added, with a little air of 
disappointment: “I do wish you were coming 
with us !” 

“That,” replied Blythe, smiling his wide smile 
as he poured coffee for her, “is precisely what I 
am going to do.” 

Louise, in the act of taking the cup from him, 
looked into his face with an expression of pleased 
mystification on her own. 

“Why, what is — how can — ” She broke off 
suddenly and rose from her chair in the intensity 
of a pleasure which she herself, at that moment, 
could scarcely have analyzed. “Surely,” she went 
on in a lower tone, her face irradiated by a smile 
which it thrilled him to observe, “Surely you are 
not the man who sulks?” 


128 


THE EDDY 


“One of Laura’s agreeable fictions,” he pro- 
nounced. “She calls my little place Sullen Manor, 
and declares that it is my sulking cave, because 
I’ve not had her over there to see it. I’ve had 
no chance to ask her until now. Do you mean to 
say she did not tell you that I was the organizer 
of this expedition?” 

“The secretive creature did not even hint at 
such a thing,” declared Loiuse, not very success- 
fully pretending to be miffed. 

“Now I call that downright neglect of orders,” 
said Blythe, also striving to show a serious face. 
“I particularly charged Laura to tell you who the 
party of the third part was to be in order that 
you might have the privilege of refusing to ac- 
company the expedition in case you so desired. A 
shocking departure from discipline on Laura’s 
part.” 

“Then it was you,” said Louise, lighter in 
spirits than she had been for a long time, “who 
invited me?” 

“My dear, don’t you know he would say so to 
you no matter whether it were true or not?” said 
Laura, who had caught Louise’s question, breez- 
ing into the dining-room at that moment. “Come 
on, children. Your antique chaperone is impatient 
to be on her disregarded way. Louise, have you 
had your coffee? And some toast? Finish them 
this instant! Even so ascetic and imaginative a 


THE EDDY 


129 


person as Mr. Blythe knows that a girl must have 
a little breakfast before venturing upon an ex- 
pedition into the jungles of Jersey.” 

Laura, perfect in a walking suit of shepherd’s 
plaid and tan walking shoes, had, on this morning, 
the animation as well as the beautiy of a girl. 
Blythe compared the two as they stood side by 
side, hastily sipping coffee. Laura, with her 
Judith-black, glossy hair and fresh, youthful color, 
and Louise with her thick coils of vivid, velvety 
auburn and glowing ivory pallor — Blythe thought, 
studying them for a moment over the rim of his 
cup, that he had never seen so splendid a contrast* 

“ A lions /” Laura broke in upon his reflection. 
“Are we to dawdle here until luncheon time? 
Already it is,” looking at her watch, “twenty-four 
seconds past eight!” 

Blythe, slipping into his greatcoat, turned a 
solemn face upon Laura when they had reached 
the hall, outward-bound. 

“There is one thing, Laura, in connection with 
this expedition, that I am keenly sorry for,” he 
said, assuming a sepulchral tone. 

“Why, what is that?” asked Laura, a little 
alarmedly, taken off her guard. 

“Well,” replied Blythe, still solemn, “you’ll 
only be away from here for about fifteen hours, 
and how are you possibly going to have your 
apartment completely redecorated, from forepeak 


130 


THE EDDY 


to mizzen, alow and aloft, in that space of time?” 

“Tush !” laughed Laura. “There will be plenty 
of time to have the place done over — and it really 
does sorely need it, now doesn’t it?” this with a 
wistfulness at which Blythe and Louise laughed, 
“ — when I take Louise to Europe with me in 
May — less than three months off.” 

“Am I to go to Europe with you, dear — 
really?” asked Louise, surprised and pleased; for 
Laura had said nothing about it before. 

“Most assuredly you are,” replied Laura, en- 
tirely in earnest. “If, that is, you can make up 
your mind to be burdened by the companionship 
of one so aged.” 

The topic was lost in the excitation of their 
arranging themselves in Laura’s car, which was 
to take them to the ferry. But the thought of it 
recurred to Louise several times during the ride 
to the ferry. It was an alluring prospect, barring 
the obstacles. How could she leave her mother, 
even for a short time, now that she had rejoined 
her after a separation of years? Finally she was 
able to dismiss such cogitations and yield herself 
to the enjoyment of the day ahead. 

It was one of those unseasonably mild days 
in late February that occasionally “drop in” to 
point an accusing finger at the harshness of winter. 
A brilliant sun swam in a cloudless sky, and the 
soft yet invigorating balminess of late April was, 


THE EDDY 


131 


as they noticed when they sped by the Park, de- 
luding the buds of tree and hedge into swelling 
prematurely and even seducing the willows into 
a vague, timidly displayed elusive green. Hardy, 
pioneering robins, advance couriers sent forth to 
investigate the senile endurance of winter, hopped 
about the Park sward. School-ward bound boys, 
out of sight of their homes, were doffing their 
irksome overcoats, and thrusting them, blanket- 
wise, at demure little schoolgirls who, in turn, 
were carrying their stuffy jackets over their arms. 
Motormen and truckmen were smothering yawns 
that denoted a premature spring fever. Busi- 
ness-bound men, going more slowly than usual, 
glancing occasionally at the sky of sapphire, and 
feeling on their cheeks gusty little zephyrs from 
the South, thought of fishing “where the wild 
stream sings.” Belated shopgirls, sensing the 
morning’s benign balm as they hurried through 
crowds, thought of hats and furbelows for the 
season that, they surmised, was almost upon them. 

In the ferry-bound automobile, John Blythe was 
thinking about a letter hid in the pocket of his 
coat and wondering how the person whom the 
letter most concerned would regard its contents. 
Louise was wondering if her mother would be 
annoyed over the word she had left with her maid 
that she would be with Laura for the entire day 
and part of the evening; occasionally she glanced 


132 


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sidelongwise at John Blythe, when there was no 
possibility of his catching her at it, and strove 
vaguely to analyze the sense of power, mingled 
with kindliness, which his presence diffused. 
Laura, leaning back, emitting an occasional ab- 
surdity, studied them both and wondered, her 
eyes a little dreamy, if matters ever actually turned 
out in real life as they did in novels. 

They stood on the ferryboat’s prow, bathing in 
the sun’s relenting glow and blinking at the gold- 
tipped river crests; and it was only ten o’clock 
when, after half an hour’s ride on the slam-bang 
little accommodation train, they debarked at the 
spick-and-span little station, at the side of which 
Blythe’s care-taker, a grinning but stolid German, 
had drawn up a fine and comfortable, if old-fash- 
ioned, surrey to which was hitched a pair of glossy, 
mettlesome sorrels. 

Louise and Laura felt like clapping their hands 
when, after the two-mile drive through wood- 
lands and past neat, well-cared-for little farms 
the clean, sweet-smelling soil of which already was 
being turned up, they drove on a firm, natural road 
through a wide wooden gate and came in sight of 
the pretty Colonial house, with four bright yellow 
pillars, topped by a balcony of snowy white, with 
wide-open shutters of an intense green, and a big 
white double door at the sides of which were little 
grooved columns surmounted by the inevitable 


THE EDDY 


133 


Corinthian capitals. The house, fresh and smart 
in its old-fashioned way, was roomier than it 
looked from the front. It was divided by a wide 
hall which ran its entire length on the ground 
floor; and a wide stairway ran from the hall in 
front to the second floor, where, after the Colo- 
nial fashioij, the balcony gave upon sleeping 
rooms. 

“Sullen Manor,” announced Laura, assuming 
the megaphonic utterance of the sight-seeing car’s 
expounder. “But doesn’t it beautifully belie its* 
name and its owner’s doldrumish use of it? Why, 
it is as pretty and cheerful as a pigeon-cote snug- 
gling under sifting cherry blossoms ! How much 
ground is there around the place, John?” 

“Twenty acres,” replied Blythe, smiling a little 
gravely. “I suppose I know every foot of the 
twenty acres, too, though I left here — it is where I 
was born, you know — when I was seven years old. 
My father lost the place, you see, through bad in- 
vestments and what not, when I was at that age. 
We moved to New Orleans, and a year later both 
my father and mother were swept off by yellow 
fever. I only remember them in a shadowy way. 
Oddly enough, I remember this old place much 
better than I do my parents; its corners, clumps of 
trees, and that sort of thing. I had a chance to get 
the place back a couple of years ago, and I seized 
it. A good deal of the gear that was here when I 


134 


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was a tyke is still here, stowed in the attic; for the 
place has not been often occupied since we left it. 
I’ve refurnished it in a sort of a way. I hope you’ll 
not find it so bad, Laura; but I’m prepared right 
now to wilt under your superior, and, I might say, 
your inveterate knowledge of interior decora- 
tion.” 

Blythe looked a bit self-disdainful over what 
had been rather a long speech for him, particu- 
larly when he observed that Louise had been wait- 
ing to ask him something. 

“You will not think me inquisitive, Mr. 
Blythe?” she prefaced. “But what you said about 
the — the carrying away of your people by yellow 
fever not only touched me but aroused my curi- 
osity. You were only a child then, of course. 
What did you do then? Were you taken in hand 
by relatives? You are not annoyed because I 
ask?” 

“Why should I be?” Blythe laughed. “Par- 
ticularly when the reply is so simple. I have no 
relatives — had none then. When my people died 
I was on the streets. I believe I hold the record 
yet for the number of New Orleans Picayunes and 
Times-Democrats sold in a given time. Whatever 
else I became later, I certainly was a hustling 
newsboy. Then I came up here and I’ve been 
working ever since. My annals, you see, Miss 
Treharne, are distinctly dry.” 


THE EDDY 


135 


“But your education?” Louise asked, her eyes 
alight with an interest which caused Laura to 
smile. 

“Well,” said Blythe, “there are plenty of peo- 
ple living in Princeton yet, I think, who will tell 
you, if ever you take the pains to inquire, that 
I was an exceptionally successful furnace-tender, 
tinker, chore-doer, and all-round roustabout. Oh, 
yes, I forget. I was a persuasive peddler of soap 
and starch before the Lord, too. Likewise, I 
acquired the knack of mending umbrellas. Not to 
overlook the fact that, odd times, I drove a village 
hack. At Princeton, in short, I was virtually 
everything and anything you can think of except a 
barber and a policeman. I shied at those two 
occupations.” 

“And you took your degree?” inquired Louise. 

“Just squeezed through,” replied Blythe. 

“Don’t you believe anything of the sort, 
Louise,” put in Laura. “He was valedictorian of 
his class, and, worse than that, he played full-back 
with his eleven, and a sensational full-back too. I 
ought to know. I am old enough, woe is me, to 
have been a woman grown the year John Blythe 
contributed a good three-fifths to the Tigers’ vic- 
tory over Yale.” 

Blythe, flushing embarrassedly, was holding up 
a protesting hand when the surrey drew up in front 
of the clean, scrubbed porch and the care-taker’s 


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wife, a freshly-ginghamed, bright-eyed German 
woman of middle age, appeared to receive them. 
Then, from around the left side of the house, a 
terrific yipping began. Two hysterically joyous 
fox terriers, scenting their master, came tearing 
around the porch and literally leaped upon Blythe. 
Then they “side-wheeled” in circles over the lawn, 
first listing precariously over on starboard legs and 
then on port, whimpering in their sheer delight as 
they tore around. A huge Angora cat, as they 
entered the hall, made two bounds of it from the 
huge fireplace, from which a pair of smouldering 
logs diffused a red glow that contrasted oddly with 
the streaming sunlight, to rub her sides, purring 
almost vociferously as she did so, against Blythe’s 
trousers legs. Later in the day, she was solemnly 
to conduct Blythe and his guests to the cellar for 
the purpose of exhibiting a litter which kept the 
women chained around the basket for nearly an 
hour. 

In the lives of most men and women there are 
days — usually unanticipated days — so encom- 
passed, aureoled, by a memorable happiness that, 
ever afterward, in hours of retrospection, they 
mark the beginning or denote the closing of the 
eventful periods. 

This was such a day for Blythe and Louise and 
Laura. They rambled through miles of field and 
forest, chattering and laughing like children a- 


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berrying; the women’s hair blowing free or tumb- 
ling down altogether, their skirts caught by 
brambles, their deadliest fears aroused by the 
inevitable ruminative cow. They climbed fences, 
while Blythe pretended that something had just 
dropped out of his pocket back of him. They 
romped with the dogs, they tossed pebbles at a 
mark in a garrulous little just-thawed stream, they 
even sat down on an inviting little mound, beneath 
an old elm, and played at mumblety-peg with 
Blythe’s jack-knife and quarrelled laughingly over 
the score of the game. 

When they returned to the house in mid-after- 
noon, they found the German woman preparing 
a meal for them. Laura and Louise insisted upon 
helping her. In fact, they banished her from the 
kitchen altogether and did it all themselves. 
Louise announced, her features set rather deter- 
minedly, that she was going to make some bis- 
cuits, whereupon Blythe, asking her if she’d 
learned that in the cooking class at Miss May- 
hew’s school, incontinently fled in well-simulated 
alarm. But he came back to the spotless kitchen 
to watch the two women, aproned to the neck, and 
their arms bared to the shoulders, breeze about 
with their preparations. He was repaid for his 
inquisitiveness by being swaddled in an apron and 
set to peel the potatoes. 

The meal was an unqualified success, including 


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the biscuits, which, to Louise’s intense surprise, 
were superb, although Blythe impertinently main- 
tained that the German woman really had made 
them and that Louise had merely heated them 
over. The light began to fall as they chatted 
around the table, and Blythe, having no great 
liking for oil lamps, tossed logs on to the dining- 
room fireplace for the flickering glow of their 
light. Blythe lighted a cigar with his coffee and 
fell into a silence of content when Louise and 
Laura began to hum, very low, snatches of old 
songs in unison; Laura in her deep, moving con- 
tralto, with an appealing little “break” in it, and 
Louise in a clear, sweet soprano — she had been 
the honor girl of her school for her singing. 

“More,” Blythe would give the repressed com- 
mand when they ceased; and they would willingly 
obey. After a while, darkness having quite fallen, 
Laura went to another part of the house for her 
after-dinner cigarette. She made it a practice not 
to take her cigarettes in the presence of quite 
young women. 

Blythe, silent enough now, and his silence tacitly 
concurred in by Louise, who also had become 
preoccupied, under the spell of the flickering fire- 
light and her nearness, alone, to a man who made 
a strong appeal to her imagination, brought up a 
deep leather chair before the logs and motioned 
to Louise to take it. But she pulled an old-fash- 


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ioned three-legged footstool before the fire, and 
Blythe himself had to take the chair. Thus they 
sat silent for a while, listening to the sputtering 
of the green logs. 

“Louise.” 

It was the first time he had called her that. But 
she did not even turn her head. She was sitting 
near him on the low stool, chin in palm, her face 
illumined by the fire’s glow. It was agreeable to 
hear him call her Louise. He knew her father. 
She had been thinking of her father while she and 
Laura were singing softly. 

“Yes,” she said, quietly. 

“I am to be your guardian, Louise. Does that 
please you?” 

Blythe, leaning back in the deep chair, did not 
take his eyes from the murmuring logs. Louise, 
chin still in palm, turned to look at him calmly. 
Then she gazed back into the fire. 

“Yes,” she replied, no surprise in her tone. 
Perhaps, she thought whimsically, the dancing, 
leaping flames had hypnotized her. But she was 
not surprised. She was, instead, swept by a surge 
of deep gladness. “You have a letter from my 
father?” 

“Two,” said Blythe. “One of them is for you.” 

She moved her little stool close to his chair and 
he handed her the packet. The letter for her 
was under cover of the letter addressed to Blythe. 


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Louise studied, in the fire’s glow, the bold, clear 
address on the envelope. It was the first time she 
had ever seen her father’s handwriting. Her 
eyes became slightly suffused at that thought. Her 
letter dropped out of the larger envelope. 

“If you care to, read the one addressed to me 
first, Louise,” said Blythe. 

Louise, turning a bit the better to catch the fire’s 
glow, read her father’s letter addressed to Blythe 
— as far as she could read it. She was nearly at 
the end when her unshed tears blinded her. 
Blythe’s hand, which she then felt, without sur- 
prise, softly clasping both of her own as they 
rested in her lap, felt very cool and soothing to 
her. 

After a while, nothing having been said by 
either, she broke the envelope and read her 
father’s letter to her. It was not a long letter, 
but it took her a long time to read it; the tears 
would blot out the words, try as she would to 
crowd them back. 

Her father’s letter to Blythe was couched 
in the tone a man assumes in addressing his 
lawyer who also is his friend. It bore the 
postmark of Lahaina, Island of Maui, Hawaii 
— George Treharne’s sugar plantations were 
on that island of the Hawaiian group. The 
letter concerned Louise wholly. He was tied 
to his plantations, owing to labor troubles with 


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141 


the Japanese, and there was no possibility of his 
visiting the States for some time. He had been 
surprised to hear that Louise had left school. She 
was now a woman grown. He had looked for- 
ward to the time when, he hoped, she might feel 
an impulse to come to him. If that time had not 
yet come he trusted implicity to Blythe to see that 
she should be properly bestowed, placed in a fitting 
environment, and shielded from baneful influ- 
ences. He knew that Blythe, the young partner 
of his old lawyer, now dead, would not fail him 
in this. He desired that Blythe should apply im- 
mediately for a court order appointing him his 
daughter’s legal guardian. He inclosed the neces- 
sary papers for the accomplishment of that pur- 
pose. He was eager to see his daughter, and 
hoped to see her within a year. In the meantime 
he confidently committed her to Blythe’s watchful 
guardianship. 

His letter to Louise bespoke a deep and solici- 
tous affection. He told her of Blythe, adverting 
to him in terms of praise as a man of exalted 
honor (“Poor father! as if I did not know that,” 
thought Louise, when she came to that passage), 
and beseeching her to follow Blythe’s advice in all 
matters in which his large experience would be 
invaluable to her. He added that he felt that she 
would not find Blythe’s suggestions irksome. He 
inclosed a draft on a Honolulu bank for five thou- 


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sand dollars, which would suffice for her needs 
until she heard from him again. He hoped to see 
her within a year. And he was hoping that she 
would be glad to see her “always-affectionate 
father, George Treharne.” 

At length Louise conquered her tears and turned 
a fire-illumined smile upon Blythe. 

“I am glad,” she said simply. “Even before 
you told me, this had been the happiest day of my 
life. Now it is beautiful. I cannot even begin to 
tell you how beautiful it is.” 

“Then I shall apply for the guardianship, 
Louise,” said Blythe. “I wish I could say how it 
pleases me to know you are willing that I should.” 

“Willing?” said Louise. “Do you know that, 
aside from Laura, you are the only — ” She had 
been close to saying “friend;” but she could not 
leave her mother out in that way; — “the only 
adviser I have?” 

Blythe, glancing from the logs into her eyes as 
she said that, longed to take her in his arms. 

Laura, at the piano in the music room on the 
other side of the hall, began softly to play the 
barcarole from “The Tales of Hoffmann.” They 
listened for a little while, and then Blythe said, 
smiling gravely: 

“As your father says, I shall not be, I hope, 
an exacting guardian. There are many things 
upon which I shall not touch at all. I shall not 


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143 


affect to believe that you do not know what I 
mean.” 

“I know,” said Louise. 

“Your duty is that to which your heart prompts 
you — I know that,” said Blythe. “It is not for me, 
nor for anyone else, to seek to alter your concep- 
tion of your duty. All that I ask is that you call 
upon me in your time of need, if that time should 
ever come ; and I hope it never shall. For the rest, 
nothing is to be changed at my suggestion. The 
scroll is in your hands, Louise. Only when you 
need me — I shall not fail you then.” 

“Would it be unworthy,” she asked him after a 
pause, “if I were not to tell my father — just yet — 
that I am living with my mother?” 

Blythe knew what a hard question that had 
been for her to ask. 

“Not unworthy, or anything like it, I think,” 
he replied promptly, “when the motive is so pure 
and fine.” 

Impulsively she rose and held out both of her 
hands and he took them in his. 

“Call Laura,” she said. “I want to tell her. I 
want my guardian angel to meet my guardian.” 

Laura came into the room as she spoke. She 
walked over to Louise and placed an arm around 
her. 

“I knew it, dear,” she said to Louise. “John 
told me last night. That is why we are over here. 


144 


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He thought, and I agreed with him, that it would 
be better to tell you at the close of a happy day. 
And was there ever such a happy day since the 
world began?” 

Blythe looked at his watch and whistled. 

“We’ve half an hour to make the last New 
York train tonight, and a two-mile drive to the 
station,” he said. “If we miss the train we’ll have 
to stay here all night.” 

Laura gathered up her skirts and raced for her 
hat, Louise after her. 

“Stay here all night!” gasped Laura. “You 
are making a glorious beginning as a guardian,- 
aren’t you !” 

It was past ten o’clock when Louise, in Laura’s 
cai;, which had been waiting at the ferry, reached 
the house on the Drive, Laura having been 
dropped at her apartment. The sheer happiness 
of the day still absorbed her. Up to the moment 
when the car pulled up at the curb she had been 
going over and over, since parting with Blythe and 
Laura, the incidents of the day that had made it 
such an oasis of happiness. 

But it all disappeared like a suddenly-vanishing 
mirage when, upon stepping to the pavement, she 
saw Langdon Jesse’s car drawn up at the curb. 


CHAPTER VII 


J ESSE’S car looming suddenly upon her, in- 
stantly dissolved Louise’s happy absorption 
and aroused within her the foreboding that 
she was upon the threshold of something sinister; 
and the premonition caused her to become physi- 
cally and mentally tense as she ascended the 
steps. 

The impact of the hall’s stream of light slightly 
blinded and confused her as she entered; but she 
very soon discerned Jesse and Judd standing be- 
fore the wide, brassy fireplace. Both were in 
shaggy automobile coats and plainly were about 
to leave the house. Judd, his burnished bald pate 
mottledly rosy from the heat of the blazing logs, 
was standing with his back to the fire, his hands 
thrust in the greatcoat pockets, his heavy under- 
shot jaw working upon an imaginary cud. Jesse, 
towering over the other man, but his own increas- 
ing over-bulkiness made more manifest by his bulg- 
ing coat of fur, was the first to see Louise, who, 
with an inclination of the head, was for passing 
them to gain the stairs. Neither Jesse nor Judd 
intended that this should be. The two had dined 


146 


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together. The blitheness of their humor, there- 
fore, contained also a seasoning of carelessness. 

Without the least movement of his grotesquely- 
paunched body, Judd turned his head sidewise 
and viewed Louise quizzically through his sharp, 
red-rimmed, oddly small eyes. 

“Evening — er — daughter,” he said to her in an 
experimental but sufficiently matter-of-fact tone. 

The greeting sounded so incredible that Louise, 
coming to a sudden halt, rested her hands on the 
back of a chair and stared curiously at him with- 
out a word. She felt very cold, in spite of the ex- 
cessive heat of the hall; but she was amazed quite 
beyond the power of speech. While thus she 
stood, staring puzzledly at Judd, Jesse faced her, 
and, bringing his heels together with a click, made 
her a low bow accompanied by a sweeping cross- 
wise gesture with his cap of fur. It is a dangerous 
thing for a man to attempt the grand manner un- 
less he is very sure of his practice or at least of the 
indulgence of his gallery. Louise, startled as she 
was, could not fail to notice the inadequacy of his 
attempt. 

“Glad I haven’t missed you, after all, Lou — 
Miss Treharne,” said Jesse, catching himself be- 
fore he had quite finished addresing her by her 
first name. His tone was grossly familiar; and 
Louise, merely glancing at him, saw that the ques- 
tion that was always in his eyes when he looked 


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147 


at her now was made more searching and persist- 
ent by his potations. “I’ve been dallying a-pur- 
pose. I came to offer you the use of my box for 
‘Pelleas and Melisande’ — it’s being done at the 
Manhattan tonight for the first time here, of 
course you know. They’re repeating it Friday 
night, though. Mary Garden’s a dream in it, they 
say — she’s a dream in any old thing — or hardly 
anything, when it comes to that,” and he laughed 
boldly at the suggestiveness of the remark. “The 
box is yours for Friday night. May I hope to 
join ” 

Louise, as he spoke, had been steadying her- 
self to make reply. Now she raised a hand for 
him to desist. The gesture was simple, but he 
obeyed the implied command. Perhaps it was the 
picture that she made in her anger that warned 
him. She stood straight, shoulders back, head up, 
eyes gazing unflinchingly into his; a moving figure 
of womanly dauntlessness, had there been eyes 
there thus to appraise her attitude. 

“Mr. Jesse,” she said in a clear tone, picking 
her words with a cutting deliberation, “you are 
not, I have heard, deficient in intelligence. A very 
short time ago you had the hardihood to proffer 
me the use of one of your cars. I declined for 
the same reason that I now repeat in refusing 
your proffer of the use of your opera box. There 
is no imaginable reason why I should accept such 


148 


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favors at your hands. I told you that before. 
And you knew it before I told you. My acquaint- 
anceship with you is merely casual. But, since 
you force me to it by disregarding what I said be- 
fore, permit me to say now, explicitly and I hope 
finally, that I am not conscious of the least desire 
to become further acquainted with you.” 

Judd choked on a gloatful cough. While 
Louise had been speaking he had been grinning 
malevolently at Jesse, the grin saying, as plainly 
as words: “Well, I was right, wasn’t I? You’re 
properly shrivelled, aren’t you?” 

Jesse smiled chagrinedly and, as he imagined, 
conciliatingly. But he evaded her direct gaze, and 
his wholly unconvincing assumption of the grand 
manner had quite departed. He was not, however, 
appreciably disturbed. Jesse had a habit of dis- 
counting such setbacks in advance. The stock 
market and women required deft manipulation, 
he considered, and his fame as a manipulator was 
established. The citadel, finally scaled, would be 
the more inviting for the difficulty of the besiege- 
ment. He entertained no doubts as to the out- 
come. In the meantime Louise could enjoy her 
schoolgirl heroics. He was not unfamiliar with 
that sort of thing. But in time they all sensed 
the glamour of the advantages he so well knew 
how to dangle before them. These thoughts 
danced agreeably before Jesse’s mental vision 


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149 


even at the moment when he felt himself, with 
no sense of degradation, to be the target of 
Louise’s scorn. 

“Well, I am sorry, Miss Treharne, that you 
still seem to misunderstand me,” said Jesse, at- 
tempting the tone of one whose sorrow overtops 
his mortification. 

“It is because I do understand you that I speak 
as I do,” replied Louise with perfect self-posses- 
sion. Judd choked again in the gleefulness of his 
vindication and Jesse shot him a malignant glance. 
Then and there Jesse began to outline a little plan 
whereby, by means of “market” pressure, he cal- 
culated that he could promptly and effectually 
change Judd’s attitude. 

“I prefer to believe, Miss Treharne,” said 
Jesse, “that you are indisposed and that upon re- 
flection you will be sorry that ” 

“I am perfectly well,” interposed Louise in a 
tone of cold finality, “and I shall not be sorry.” 
Then she passed up the stairs to her mother’s 
apartments. 

“Now will you be good!” broke out Judd, 
chuckling vindictively, when she had gone. “Say, 
Jesse, I wonder if you feel so much like a clipped 
and trimmed Lothario as you look?” 

Jesse, his mask off, growled something inarticu- 
late by way of reply. Then: “Are you for the 
club?” he asked Judd. He decided that he might 


150 


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as well test the strength of the screws upon Judd 
at once. They went out together. 

Mrs. Treharne, dressed for a restaurant supper 
party that was to assemble at midnight, was read- 
ing, with the wistfulness of one debarred, the “so- 
ciety news” in a chattery and generally wrong 
weekly publication when Louise entered her sit- 
ting room. She was wonderfully coiffured, and 
encased in a decollette dress that somewhat too lib- 
erately exploited the chisellings of her still milky 
arms and shoulders. She stiffened slightly in her 
chair at the sight of Louise; and the dimplings 
which had been creasing her plastic face in her en- 
joyment of the publication’s malevolent gossip 
gave way to the expression of peevishness with 
which her daughter was becoming all too well ac- 
quainted. 

“Well, my dear,” she started to say as Louise, 
in whose eyes the embers of the wrath Jesse’s 
words had aroused still slumbered, “I must say 
that you have a cool way of walking off and ” 

“No reproaches just now, mother, please,” in- 
terposed Louise, sinking wearily into a chair. “I 
never had a happier day until, returning here ” 

She paused, passing a hand before her eyes. 
She was loth to enter upon the topic of Judd and 
Jesse with her mother. But Mrs. Treharne, look- 
ing at her more closely, saw her perturbation. 


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151 


“Oh, you met Mr. Judd and Mr. Jesse as you 
came in?” she asked, a note of slightly worried 

curiosity in her tone. “Were they ?” She 

broke off. “Men are men, my dear,” she re- 
sumed, placatingly. “They had been dining — I 
noticed that. But of course they said nothing 
to ” 

“Your business adviser,” said Louise — she could 
not bring herself to mention Judd’s name — “greet- 
ed me as ‘daughter.’ I remember now that I was 
too much startled to tell him that he must not re- 
peat that.” 

“Tush, Louise — a slip of the tongue, of course,” 
said Mrs. Treharne, appeasingly. Privately, how- 
ever, she already began to contrive the things she 
intended to say to Judd on the morrow. “And 
Mr. Jesse — did he ” 

“Mr. Jesse,” interposed Louise, “caught him- 
self as he was about to address me as Louise. He 
offered me the use of his box at the opera. Several 
days ago — I was too chagrined to tell you — he in- 
sisted upon my accepting the use of one of his 
automobiles. I hope I made it plain to him to- 
night — and I tried hard enough to make it plain 
to him before — that there is not the remotest 
chance that I shall ever accept his sinister civil- 
ities.” 

“Why ‘sinister,’ Louise?” put Mrs. Treharne, 
bridling. “How can you possibly put such a con- 


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struction upon it when one of my friends gener- 
ously extends to you courtesies that are commonly 
and with perfect propriety accepted by ” 

Louise sighed wearily and held up a pleading 
hand. 

“Don’t ask me such a question — please, 
mother,” she entreated. “You don’t know how the 
subject revolts me.” 

“But, my dear,” her mother persisted, “what 
is it that you have against Mr. Jesse? I am en- 
titled to know.” 

“I am not sufficiently interested in the man to 
have anything against him,” replied Louise. “Is 
it not enough that I loathe him?” 

“No, Louise, it is not enough,” pronounced her 
mother, plainly ready for argument on the sub- 
ject. “You are too young a woman to be forming 
prejudices or leaping to conclusions. What do 
you know about Mr. Jesse that has caused you 
to form such an opinion of him?” 

Louise hesitated. Her intimacy with her 
mother had never been very great. There had 
never been any plain talk, or even mother-and- 
daughter confidences, between them. The theme 
as she had said, was revolting to her. But her 
mother deliberately chose to remain on that 
ground. There was no path around the point her 
mother dwelt upon. Louise entertained no 
thought of evading it. 


THE EDDY 


153 


“Mother,” she said, leaning forward in her 
earnestness, “it is natural enough, I know, that 
you still regard me as a child. But, before I an- 
swer your question, are you willing to grant, at 
least for the time, that I am a woman?” 

“Don’t be so unmitigratedly solemn about it, 
Louise,” demurred her mother, evasively. “My 
question was simple enough.” 

“Simple enough to put, but not so simple for me 
to answer,” was Louise’s quiet reply. “But I shall 
answer it nevertheless. The reason, then, why I 
do not intend to have any further contact with 
Langdon Jesse is that he is one of the most noto- 
rious libertines in New York; a man who regards 
women from a single angle — as his prey. Every- 
body seems to know that, mother, except you: 
and you don’t know it, do you?” There was a 
pathos in the eagerness with which the girl asked 
the question; it spoke of a dim hope she yet had 
that perhaps, after all, her mother did not know 
about Langdon Jesse. Her mother’s harsh, dodg- 
ing reply quickly dashed that hope. 

“Who has been telling you such scandalous 
things, child?” Mrs. Treharne demanded. “Laura 
Stedham?” 

“You must not ask me that question,” replied 
Louise, quietly firm. “But if nobody had told me 
about Langdon Jesse — and I shall not deny that I 
was told — I am sure my instinct would have taught 


154 


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me to suspect him of being — precisely what he is.” 

Mrs. Treharne shook her head dismally. 

“It is exactly as I feared it would be, Louise,” 
she said, sighing drearily. “You are narrow, re- 
stricted, pent-in; you haven’t even a symptom 
of bigness of view; your horizon is no wider than 
the room in which you happen to be. I always 
feared they would make a prude of you. Now 
I see that my forebodings were right.” 

Louise, very much wrought upon, rose rather 
unsteadily and walked over to her mother’s chair. 

“You repel me a little, mother,” she said in a 
low tone. “It hurts me to say that: but it is the 
truth. If I am a prude, then I am unconscious of 
it. It may be that I don’t know your definition of 
the word.” She paused and gazed about the room 
wearily. “If to be a prude,” she resumed, “is 
to be conscious of the desire and the intention to be 
an honest woman, then, mother, I am a prude,” 
her voice breaking a little. “And if one must be 
a prude to recoil from the hideous advances of a 
man like Langdon Jesse, then again I am a 
prude.” 

She had been unfairly placed on the defensive. 
She had not meant to wound. But, while her 
words cut her mother like the impact of thongs, 
they did not arouse within her a sense of the hu- 
miliation of her position. 

“Louise,” she asked, hoarsely, moistening her 


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155 


dry lips, “are you saying these — these stinging 
things with the deliberate purpose of reflecting 
upon your mother?” 

Addressed to anybody else but Louise, the 
question would have been absurd in the opening it 
afforded. 

“I should hate to have you think that,” replied 
Louise, flushing hotly and taking her mother’s 
hands. “You don’t think such a thing, do you?” 

“I don’t know what to think,” said her mother, 
taking the martyred tone, “when you say such 
horrid things. I never heard you say such — 
such flaying things before. I can’t think what is 
coming over you.” 

“I am very lonesome, for one thing,” said 
Louise, looking at her mother through suffused 
eyes. “I see so little of you. Perhaps I become 
moody. But I never mean, never meant, to say 
anything to hurt you, dear.” 

“But you see enough, if not too much, of — of 
others, Louise,” put in her mother, slightly molli- 
fied. “You have been with Laura ever since early 
this morning?” 

“Yes; with Laura — and another,” replied 
Louise, unfailingly candid. 

“Another?” said Mrs. Treharne, querulously. 
“Whom do you mean?” 

“Mr. John Blythe,” replied Louise, coloring. 

“John Blythe?” said her mother, wonderingly. 


156 


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“You were with Laura and John Blythe? So that 
is the direction of the wind? Laura is trying 
to ” She broke off when she saw the expres- 

sion of pain on her daughter’s face. 

“Please don’t say that,” said Louise, her face 
and forehead a vivid crimson. “I have often met 
Mr. Blythe at Laura’s. I couldn’t begin to tell 
you how I esteem him. And, mother, he is to be 
my guardian.” She had meant to tell her mother 
that at a more fitting time; but, since Blythe’s 
name had come up, she discerned that there could 
be no excuse for a postponement of the revela- 
tion. 

Mrs. Treharne gazed at her daughter with 
mouth agape. When she finally spoke her words 
were almost inarticulate. 

“Your guardian?” she gasped. “John Blythe 
is to be your guardian? At whose direction? 
Upon whose applicaton?” 

“My father’s, mother.” 

“But are you sure that you are not being tricked 
— that ” 

“John Blythe is not the man to trick anybody, 
dear — everybody, of course, knows that,” said 
Louise, very prompt to a defense in that quarter. 
“Moreover, I saw the letters from my father. 
One of them is to me. So there is no mistake 
about it.” 

“What does your father say in his letter?” 


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157 


asked Mrs. Treharne, suspiciously. “Does he 
mention me? say anything to my detriment?” 

“Nothing of that sort, mother,” replied Louise, 
disliking exceedingly the drift of the conversation. 
“Mr. Blythe’s guardianship is to be largely a 
matter of form. I — I am glad the arrangement 
has been made. There are times when I feel that 
I need guidance. You are so busy and I so much 
dislike to worry you. Often, since I came home, 
I’ve found myself wishing that I had a brother.” 
She stopped, her voice faltering. 

Mrs. Treharne started slightly, swept by the 
thought of how often she had wished that Louise 
herself had been a son. Now, for the moment, 
she repented that thought; the dignity and strength 
of her daughter were making their appeal to her. 
She had her periods of fairness, and she could not 
throttle her consciousness of the wretchedness of 
Louise’s position under that roof nor subdue the 
accusing inner voice that held her solely respon- 
sible for it. She trembled with indignation when 
she remembered that Judd had dared to address 
Louise as “daughter.” She raged at herself for 
not possessing the strength to cast the Judd incu- 
bus from her once and forever. And she ended, 
as usual, by giving way to an effusion of dismal 
tears and by promising herself that “some time- 
some day ” 

Louise went to bed with a disturbed mind. She 


158 


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was trying not to face the indubitable fact that 
her mother was proving herself but a reed to lean 
upon. Then her drowsy thoughts wandered to 
the fire-lit dining-room of the serene old house 
in the country in and around which she had spent 
a day marked by a sort of placid happiness which 
she could not quite analyze ; and her last thought, 
before succumbing to unquiet dreams based upon 
the events at the end of the day, were of a rugged, 
kindly-faced man quietly watching her as she read 
her father’s letter by the flickering light of the 
droning logs. 

Judd, still chuckling viciously, continued to 
taunt the rebuked but by no means cast-down Jesse 
after the two had got into Jesse’s car. 

“Not saying much, are you, old top?” he gur- 
gled joyously as the car throbbed away from the 
curb. “Well, I don’t blame you. Not, of course, 
that I didn’t give you fair warning. I told you 
you’d be frozen stiff if you tried on any of your 
Don Juanish airs and graces in that quarter. But 
don’t take it to heart — don’t grieve over it. You’ll 
thaw out again in time. Right now I wouldn’t 
dare take a chance on touching you for fear one 
of your arms or something’d drop off. But you’ll 
thaw — you’ll thaw,” and he squirmed and wabbled 
around in his seat in the excess of his mirth. 

Jesse, gnawing on an unlighted cigar as was 


THE EDD / 


159 


his wont when temporarily eclipsed or engaged 
in blocking out a campaign, listened in silence. 
When it becomes the unfailing habit of a man to 
enjoy the last laugh he learns to pay little heed to 
the too-previous chirrupings of those over whom 
he feels confident of eventually triumphing. So 
he permitted Judd to enjoy himself. When the 
chuckles of his companion gradually ceased, how- 
ever, he said, drily enough : 

“To all intents and purposes she’s a dependent 
of yours, isn’t she ?” 

Judd parried the question. He was indifferent 
enough as to what might happen to Louise Tre- 
harne: he regarded her as an interloper, and he 
was disgruntled over her studiously aloof treat- 
ment of him. But it had become a habit with him 
to parry Jesse’s questions since the occasion when 
his over-expansiveness in replying to a few seem- 
ingly innocent and unmeditated questions from 
Jesse had resulted in the sound “market” trouncing 
which his one-time pupil had inflicted upon him. 

“What the devil difference does it make?” was 
Judd’s reply. “She has your number all right, 
and that’s all you need to know, isn’t it?” and 
he chuckled again. 

Jesse waited again until Judd’s glee had sub- 
sided, then resumed. 

“She has to look to you to make provision for 
her needs — clothes, hats, ribbons, furbelows, that 


160 


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sort of thing— doesn’t she?” he inquired with the 
coolness of one who does not mean to be re- 
buffed. 

“Oh, forget it,” said Judd, a little grumpily 
now. “Don’t try to pin me, Jesse. I don’t spout 
about these things. She’s living under one of my 
roofs, is a member of one of my households. And 
she regards you as — well, as a considerably- 
drowned water-bug. Why don’t you let it go at 
that? There are more women in the world than 
there are red ants or railroad ties. Can’t you 
take your medicine — stand for the defeat?” 

“Not in this particular case,” was Jesse’s per- 
fectly frank reply; he could be frank when there 
was no possibility of a “come-back.” “What’s 
more, I don’t intend to. Just make up your mind 
to that, will you?” 

“Oho!” said Judd, struck by the intentional 
rawness which Jesse had put into his last phrase. 
“That’s the tune, is it?” 

“That house of yours on the Drive isn’t the 
place for the young woman,” said Jesse. Judd 
knew that he wasn’t assuming any virtuous strain, 
but merely leading up to a point. “You ought to 
know that — as the father of a family.” 

“You’re becoming confoundedly erect in your 
ideas, aren’t you?” snorted Judd. “And I’ve told 
you before that I won’t have you dabbling in my 
private affairs. Just cut out your harpings, in this 


THE EDDY 


161 


connection, upon my family and all of that sort of 
thing, understand ?” 

“Damn your private affairs,” said Jesse, quietly, 
but with a note of meaningfulness in his tone that 
caused Judd to sit up and take immediate notice. 
“I am no more interested in your private affairs 
than I am in the transactions of the Congo Mis- 
sionary Society. But I repeat that your — er — that 
Mrs. Treharne’s daughter doesn’t belong under 
that Riverside Drive roof. Do you understand 
me?” 

“No,” said Judd, “I don’t,” nor did he. But 
he no longer chuckled. 

“I think you’ve told me several times,” Jesse 
went on calmly, “that the young woman flaunts 
you?” 

Judd made some inarticulate reply which Jesse 
took for an affirmative. 

“That being the case,” inquired Jesse, “why do 
you keep her around the place?” 

“What’s your idea — that I should turn her into 
the street?” asked Judd, gradually getting a hold 
on Jesse’s thread. 

“Oh, she wouldn’t be in the street very long,” 
said Jesse with significant emphasis. “But, since 
on your own say-so she scarcely even nods to you, 
and you are paying the freight, what’s the an- 
swer? Doesn’t she know that she’s dependent 
upon you?” 


162 


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“How the devil could she help knowing it?” 
broke out Judd impatiently. “She has eyes and 
what belongs to her by way of brains, I suppose.” 

“Well,” said Jesse, “if she cuts in on your — your 
game, and is such a nuisance to you, why don’t 
you exert your authority — the authority of the 
provider — and ” He hesitated. 

“And what?” inquired Judd, proddingly. 

“Make provision for her — not necessarily lux- 
urious provision — under some other roof?” said 
Jesse. “In a modest little apartment, for example, 
with just the necessaries and that sort of thing. 
That would alter her demeanor toward you — 
and toward others. Once they’ve enjoyed the 
gewgaws of life the other thing is a come-down 
and they feel the sordid misery of it.” 

Judd studied. 

“You’re a deep sort of a reprobate, Jesse,” he 
said, musingly, after a pause. “I don’t profess 
to be able to plumb some features of your scoun- 
drelism, and yet I’ve never been accused of being 
uncommonly dense. How the devil would my 
planting the young woman in a miserable little 
six-by-eight flat help your case?” 

“That,” coolly replied Jesse, “is my affair; but 
you exhibit your denseness, at that, in asking such 
a fool question. It wouldn’t take her long to be- 
gin to pine for the light and laughter and lavish- 
ness of life after she’d had a taste of the miser- 


THE EDDY 


163 


able little six-by-eight flat as you call it, would 
it?” 

“And when she did begin to pine that’s where 
you’d come in, eh?” said Judd. “Yes, it was 
pretty thick of me not to catch your drift, I’ll ad- 
mit. But I guess I’ll keep out of it. You can 
conduct your own damned round-ups. You’ve 
got your nerve with you to ask me to figure in any 
such a dirty subtle scheme as that, haven’t you?” 
He spoke more in resentment of Jesse’s overbear- 
ing tone than from any profound sense of the con- 
temptibleness of Jesse’s suggestion. 

Jesse lit his cigar and said nothing for a while. 
Then, puffing hard so that the glow of his cigar 
lit up his stolid waxy face, he said: 

“I hear you’re carrying a pretty nifty line of 
cotton, Judd, and that you’re still buying. Wait- 
ing for cotton to touch sixteen cents, eh?” 

Judd cocked his ears. 

“Well,” he said, moistening his lips, “I haven’t 
got anything on you. You’re carrying ten bales 
when I’m only carrying one.” 

“Is that so?” lied Jesse with perfect serenity. 
“Well, you’re entitled to have your dream out, 
of course. But it so happens that I am not carry- 
ing even one bale.” 

Judd sat up straight in his seat. 

“Well?” he asked, huskily. 

“Well, what?” asked Jesse. 


164 


THE EDDY 


“What are you shooting at?” inquired Judd. 
“Do you mean to say you’re going to take the 
bear end of it?” 

“I don’t mean to say anything of the sort,” re- 
plied Jesse. “And you don’t suppose I’d go 
around placarding the fact if that was my in- 
tention, do you? I’m merely out of the market 
for the present, that’s all. But you’re in, eh, and 
waiting for sixteen cent cotton?” 

The screws were working all right. Jesse saw 
that. It was chilly in the automobile, but Judd 
was mopping a damp brow. 

“If I ever do break into that market,” Jesse 
went on clinchingly but in the same even tone he 
had been using, “you want to watch my smoke. 
That’s all.” 

Judd, in a cold tremor, resolved to unload his 
line of cotton as soon as the market opened on the 
morrow. Also he decided that it wouldn’t be any 
impolitic thing for him to placate Jesse in the im- 
mediate meanwhile. 

“Well, if I have been dense, I’m not now,” he 
said, reflectively. “I understand you all right.” 

“I thought you would,” said Jesse, tossing his 
cigar out of the car window. 

Despite her natural reserve and the reticence, 
born of keen humiliation, which she maintained 
in respect of her mother’s affairs, Louise, feeling 


THE EDDY 


165 


the need of an experienced woman’s counsel, gave 
to Laura Stedham, her one woman friend in need, 
a somewhat guarded account of her meeting with 
Jesse and Judd upon her return from the day in 
the country. Laura listened to the story in a sort 
of silent rage. She was not a woman to rant, and 
even if she had been, the recital that Louise gave 
her, with the wretched details which Laura could 
guess at, of her gradual hemming in at the River- 
side Drive house, filled the other woman with a 
sense of anger and disgust beyond the mere power 
of words. Louise had not previously told Laura 
of Langdon’s proffering her the use of an automo- 
bile ; she feared that Laura’s wrath and alarm over 
that would be directed against her mother for hav- 
ing made such a situation possible; and her loyalty 
to her mother never wavered. 

At the close of her story, which she gave to 
Laura in a quiet, rather hopeless way that the 
older woman found pathetic to a degree, Louise, 
in a moment of inadvertence, let fall how Judd 
had greeted her as “daughter.” Laura flared at 
that. But she held herself in, and she asked Lou- 
ise, quietly enough: 

“My dear, there is one thing that I want to ask 
you. I hope you won’t think me intrusive for ask- 
ing it. It is this: Just why are you remaining 
at that house? You know the — the circumstances 
there. I am not trying to influence you. But I 


166 


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want you to tell me just why, since you cannot 
change the conditions, you deem it necessary to go 
on living there?” 

Louise replied without hesitation. 

“I don’t lose hope that I may be able to change 
the conditions some time, dear,” she replied. 
“There would be no use in my staying with my 
mother if I did not possess that hope.” 

“But,” asked Laura^ not pressingly, but with a 
grave, interested earnestness, “don’t you think 
your chance to change the conditions is almost 
negligible? Just how can you possibly expect 
such a change ever to come about?” 

“I am hoping,” Louise answered bravely, but 
coloring, “that, if I stay on with my mother, soon- 
er or later she will become ash ” ; she could not 

finish the word “ashamed;” “she will come 

to a realization of herself,” she took up the 
thread, “of what the conditions in which she lives 
mean ; of what, eventually, they must bring her to, 
and bring me to, also. Often I think that she 
doesn’t view it as I do — as we do. She is drifting. 
She told me that she was. She has lost her moor- 
ings. I want to bring her back. I am the only 
one who could bring her back, am I not? And 
I can’t leave her as long as there is a chance to 
do that.” 

“But your own life, dear?” interposed Laura. 
“You must consider that, you know. You are a 


THE EDDY 


167 


very young woman. There is no reason why you 
should be dragged down.” 

“I shall not be,” replied Louise. “And, if my 
mother is to be dragged down, if she is to con- 
tinue in this way, of what use would my life ever 
be to me? I never could be happy with her in 
such surroundings, could I? There is only one 
thing for me to do, dear; stay with her until she 
sees it all. I know that she will understand sooner 
or later. She can’t help it. She’s bound to — to 
change. I want to help her. I don’t ever say 
anything to her, of course. It would be impossi- 
ble for me to do that. But she isn’t happy as she 
is now. My mother and I will have a dear, 
cosy, happy life together yet, Laura, never fear.” 

Laura pretended that some pictures on a mantel 
needed straightening in order to hide her suffused 
eyes. 

“All the same, Louise,” she said, resuming her 
seat after a little while, “Mr. Blythe is entitled 
to know these things that you have told me. And 
you should have the benefit of his advice. He not 
only is your guardian, but he is a man — a regular 
man — and your — oh, well, I do not need to say 
that he is your friend, do I ?” smiling. 

“I meant to tell him,” replied Louise, turning 
to gaze out of the window. 

“Oh, you did, dear?” said Laura, teasingly. 
“Then my advising you to tell him was super- 


168 


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fluous, wasn’t it? I wonder why you decided 
to tell him, Louise?” 

“Because ” Louise started to reply. But 

she did not finish, for at that instant John Blythe, 
in riding dress, walked into the room. 


CHAPTER VIII 


L AURA glanced wistfully at Blythe’s riding 
clothes. 

“I suppose you come here in that ap- 
parel to tantalize me, knowing that my odious, 
ogreish medical man has absolutely forbidden me 
to ride for the present,” she said to him in mock 
reproach. “There is nothing in the least subtle 
about that doctor man. He wants to buy my 
horse. That’s why he has forbidden me to ride. 
But I am going to thwart him by turning Scamp 
over to Louise. You ride, of course, dear?” 

Louise smiled her gratitude. She had become a 
finished rider as a young girl during the periods 
when her mother would abandon her improvident 
life in the city and retire to the country to enable 
her income partially to catch up with her expendi- 
tures. 

“I’ve been trying the most ambitious horse I ever 
saw,” said Blythe, very much the wholesome, out- 
of-doors looking man, dropping into a chair. 
“If I buy him — and I’m going to think that over 
carefully — I think I shall call him The Climber. 
He was very keen to accompany me up in the 
elevator, but the man on guard at the door 


170 


THE EDDY 


wouldn’t have it. Would you have minded my 
fetching him up, Laura? He has the true artistic 
sense, too. He tried all he knew to climb that 
statue of Bobbie Burns in the Park. Wouldn’t 
it have been a victory for Art if he had succeeded 
in demolishing that bronze libel on Burns? Then 
he wanted to walk — prance, I mean — into the car 
of some people I stopped to pass the time of day 
with. Curious psychological study, that horse. I 
can’t imagine where he acquired his mounting 
social ambition, for he’s about one-half wild horse 
of the pampas and the other half Wyoming cay- 
use.” 

“Louise,” suggested Laura, who had been med- 
itating during Blythe’s raillery, “would you care 
for a ride now?” Blythe’s eyes lighted up at the 
words. “I must have some excuse, you see, for 
driving the two of you away, for my dressmaker 
is moaning piteously over the ’phone for me to try 
some things on, and I’ll have to go. Scamp has 
been eating his head off for a fortnight, but he’ll 
behave, I’m sure. And my habit, boots, every- 
thing, will fit you perfectly.” 

Before Laura had finished Blythe was at the 
telephone, directing Laura’s stableman to send 
Scamp around and Laura was guiding Louise to 
her dressing room to put her into the hands of her 
maid for the change into Laura’s riding things. 
Half an hour later Louise, well-mounted on the 


THE EDDY 


171 


breedy-looking, over-rested but tractable enough 
Scamp, was on the Park bridle-path alongside 
Blythe, who rode the mettlesome cob he had ma- 
ligned with the stigma of cayuse. 

The two horses, adaptable striders, trotted 
teamwise for a while, Louise and Blythe silently 
giving themselves over to the enjoyment of the 
eager, tingling air and the brilliant sunshine. They 
reined up to cross the carriage road and for a 
while after that, by a sort of tacit understanding, 
they reduced their horses’ pace to a brisk walk. 

It is a bromidic truism, but it is none the less 
true, that it is only possible for a woman to be 
wholly at her ease in the presence of the man in 
whom she is not “interested.” Louise, as she 
rode at Blythe’s side through the bright vistas of 
bare, interlacing branches, perhaps would have 
shrunk from being judged by the mildly accusatory 
terms of such an axiom; nevertheless, alone with 
this man, she was wonderingly conscious of being 
possessed by a speech-cancelling diffidence, a re- 
straint not so much superimposed as involuntarily 
felt, that was wholly unusual with her in the 
presence of anyone else. She caught herself, not 
without flushing when she became aware of her 
own purpose, in the act of permitting her horse to 
drop a pace behind in order that she might be free 
to glance at Blythe’s rugged profile and the shape- 
liness of his head for an instant; for she was 


172 


THE EDDY 


beginning to discover that it was oddly difficult 
for her to meet his frank, direct, generally cheer- 
ful gaze. This was, of course, from no lack of 
candor, but, on the contrary, because she was be- 
ginning to fear betrayal through her excessive 
natural candor. It would have been impossible 
for her to name any other human being with 
whom she would have preferred to be riding 
through the sunny Park on this afternoon; yet this 
knowledge did not efface the other fact that she 
was not at her ease with him. She endeavored, 
in vaguely wondering about this, to assure her- 
self that it was because of certain revelations which 
she intended to make to Blythe concerning hap- 
penings to herself since last she had seen him; but 
her inner frankness informed her that she was 
merely searching for a pretext for her slightly 
provoking diffidence. 

Blythe was the first to break the silence. 

“ ‘On a hazy, brilliant afternoon in February, 
1754, a solitary horseman might have been 
seen — ’ ” he began to quote, smiling, in a sing-song 
way, as from the inevitable beginning of an an- 
tique novel. Louise laughed. 

“Do you feel so lonesome as all that?” she 
asked him. 

“Not precisely lonesome,” said Blythe, “but — 
well, a little detached from the picture. Speaking 
of pictures, please try and steady yourself in the 


THE EDDY 


173 


saddle for a moment while I say something pretty. 
I have been mentally browsing for a word to 
describe your profile. Now I have it. It is 
‘intaglio.’ The beauty of that word is that I 
almost think I know what it means; and also it 
fits. The mountain has labored and brought forth 
a mouse. I think that is the first compliment I 
ever made in my life,” and his reddening features 
testified to the truth of it. 

“Then I shall not deny that it pleases me,” re- 
plied Louise, able now to turn her head and look 
at him without the unwonted stealthiness which 
had been puzzling her. “It is what numismatists 
would call a ‘first-minted’ compliment, is it not?” 

“Don’t ask me to analyze it, Louise, or it might 
come apart in my hands and I shouldn’t be able 
to put it together again, being so new at the 
craft,” replied Blythe, whimsically. She found 
it very natural and agreeable that he should call 
her Louise; she had been conscious, in truth, of a 
deep-down little fear, now dissipated, that he 
might resume calling her Miss Treharne. She 
felt that she would not have cared for “Miss Ter- 
harne” any more — from him. 

They fell silent again for a little while, during 
which Blythe, infected by the furtiveness which 
had actuated Louise a little while before, once 
slightly drew rein in order to steal an unobserved 
oblique glance at Louise’s gleaming auburn hair, 


174 


THE EDDY 


which refused to be confined under her three- 
cornered Continental hat of felt, but moved in 
rebellious, slipping coils under the impact of the 
occasional gusts of wind; and he wanted, too, to 
get the effect of her cameo face outlined against 
a patch of unusually dark shrubbery slightly ahead 
of them. His plotting, however, was a dead fail- 
ure. She caught him in the very article of making 
this cribbed momentary inspection, and she 
laughed outright. 

“Draw alongside, please,” she commanded, and 
he noticed for the first time the all but indistin- 
guishable slant of her full eyes when they were 
possessed by laughter. “You are not to criticize 
the fit of Laura’s habit on me, as of course you 
were doing.” 

“Of course,” said Blythe, more or less uncon- 
sciously delivering himself of a white one. “Ad- 
ditionally, I was wondering — ” He paused a bit 
abruptly. 

“Well?” inquired Louise. 

“You won’t be annoyed?” said Blythe. “I was 
wondering just what you used to think and do, and 
sing, and say, when, in your last-previous incarna- 
tion, Titian was spending all of his hours painting 
your face and hair.” 

“Now,” replied Louise, smiling, “you are show- 
ing a suspicious proficiency for one who claims to 
have uttered his first compliment only three min- 


THE EDDY 


175 


utes ago. Annoyed? Why should I be? One 
might even become used, in the course of nineteen 
years, to the possession of green or blue or purple 
hair; so that I scarcely ever think of my ensan- 
guined locks unless I am reminded of them.” 

“I think,” said Blythe, musingly, “that you have 
the gift of cheerfulness.” 

“Oh,” replied Louise, purposely misunderstand- 
ing him, “it doesn’t take such an inordinate amount 
of resignation, really, to tolerate one’s own red 
hair.” 

“I deny that it is red,” said Blythe, assuming an 
impressive judicial air. “In fact, to employ a 
perfectly useless legal term, I note an exception to 
that statement. It isn’t red. It’s — it’s the tint 
of an afterglow; an afterglow that never was on 
land or sea.” 

At that instant they emerged upon the open 
road, and a mounted policeman held up a detain- 
ing hand, holding up a huge yellow-bodied car to 
enable them to cross to where the bridle-path be- 
gan again. Louise, crimsoning, saw her mother 
leaning back in the big car, Judd beside her. 
Blythe, too, saw Mrs. Treharne — and her com- 
panion — and lifted his hat. Louise had waved 
a hand at her mother; but it was a limp hand, and 
the sun had suddenly darkened for her. Blythe 
noticed her immediate abstraction. He under- 
stood. He rode a trifle closer to her, in silence, 


176 


THE EDDY 


for a while. Louise was gazing at the pommel 
of her saddle, and he observed the tremulousness 
about her lips. 

At a point where the path narrowed in passing 
a great boulder, Blythe reined yet closer, and, 
reaching out, pressed for an instant her gloved 
guiding hand. 

“Don’t worry, Louise — all of these things come 
right in time,” he said in a subdued tone, and as 
if they had already been speaking of that which 
had caused her sudden distress. “Be sustained 
by that belief. Everything works out right in 
time. I venture to touch upon that which pains 
you, not because we are to have a mere legal 
relationship, but because I am hoping that you 
view me as a friend. Do you?” 

“You must know that I do,” said Louise, more 
moved than he could guess. The touch of his 
hand had strangely thrilled her. “If it were not 
for you and Laura — ” She paused, turning her 
head. 

“I know,” said Blythe. “It is not a matter 
for volunteered advice. But perhaps you have 
thought of some way in which I — we — can help 
you; make the course smoother for you. Have 
you?” 

“No,” replied Louise, simply. “There were 
some occurrences — some things that happened last 
night — that I meant to tell you about. But I can’t 


THE EDDY 


111 


now. Laura will tell you. You must not be too 
angry when she tells you. The happenings were 
not the fault of my mother’s; she ” 

“I can easily surmise that,” Blythe helped her. 
“But, Louise, if you had meant to tell me these 
things yourself, what has altered your determina- 
tion? Perhaps, though,” reflecting, “that isn’t 
a fair question.” 

“The unfairness — perhaps I should call it 
weakness — is on my side,” replied Louise. “I 
make very brave resolutions,” smiling a little 
detachedly, “as to the candor I am going to re- 
veal to you when I meet you ; but when I am with 
you — ” The sentence required no finishing. 

“There is no weakness in that,” said Blythe. 
“Or, if there is, then I think my own weakness 
must be far greater than yours. There are many 
things that I want to say to you and that I find 
it impossible to say when the opportunity comes. 
Several times, for example, I have fruitlessly 
struggled to say that I hope my guardianship over 
you will erect no barrier between us.” 

“How could it?” asked Louise, meeting his eye. 

“It is just that,” replied Blythe, “which I find 
it so difficult to express. I fear to venture too 
close to the quicksands. But I might as well 
take the risk. I did not exactly mean to use 
the word ‘barrier.’ You make quite another 
appeal to me than as a ward to a guardian. 


178 


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My imagination is far more involvod than that. 
Perhaps I take a roundabout method, Louise, 
of saying that, in spite of my approaching 
guardianship, I sometimes find myself presuming 
to hope that a time might come when you would 
be willing to accept my devotion as a man.” 

“That time,” quietly replied Louise, pretend- 
ing to adjust her hat so as to screen her face with 
her arm, “has already come.” She had no pen- 
chant for evasiveness, and coquetry was apart 
from her; she spoke words that her heart 
brimmed to her lips. 

Blythe, his face transfigured, caught himself 
reeling a bit in his saddle. Her words, so quietly 
and frankly spoken, had suddenly cleared what he 
had not hoped would be anything but a pathway 
of brambles. He swayed so close to her that their 
faces almost touched, and for a mere instant he 
was conscious of the fragrance of her pure breath, 
aware to the core of him of an intoxicating pro- 
pinquity of which he had not until that moment 
dreamed. 

“Perhaps I misunderstood you, Louise,” he 
said, hoarse of a sudden, reining out and settling 
himself sidewise in his saddle so that he could see 
her. “It is impossible that I did not misunder- 
stand you.” 

Louise, gazing straight ahead, but with misty 
eyes, shook her head. She had no more words. 


THE EDDY 


179 


And her silent negation told him, better than 
words, that he had not misunderstood her. 

They rode without speaking for the remainder 
of the way back to Laura’s. Just before they drew 
up to the curb, where he was to assist her to dis- 
mount, Blythe broke the long reverie that had 
pinioned them. 

“I only came to know the meaning of what is 
called ‘the joy of living’ an hour ago, Louise,” 
Blythe said to her then. 

A moment later he was lifting her from her 
horse, and the sky swirled before his eyes as, for 
a rocketing instant, he held her in his strong arms 
and felt her warm breath (as of hyacinths, he 
thought) upon his face. He rode away leading 
her horse, and their parting was of the eyes only. 

Louise, a happy brooding expression on her 
face, walked in upon Laura, who was deeply snug- 
gled on a many-pillowed couch, and sat down, 
pre-occupiedly tapping a gloved palm with her 
riding-crop, without a word. 

“Well, dear?” said Laura, glancing at her. 

Louise continued to tap-tap her palm with the 
crop, but she was devoid of words, it appeared. 

“Louise !” Laura suddenly sat up straight on 
the couch and directed a startled, accusatory, yet 
puzzledly-smiling gaze at the wistful, unseeing and 
silent girl in the riding habit. 

Louise turned her abstracted gaze upon Laura. 


180 


THE EDDY 


“What is it, dear?” she asked. “You said 
something, didn’t you?” 

Laura gazed at her with an absorbed smile for 
nearly a minute. Then she settled back among 
the pillows. 

“No, sweetheart, I haven’t said anything,” she 
replied. 

Judd prowled about his club that night in the 
humor of a savage, barking at the club servants, 
growling at or turning his back upon cronies who 
addressed him civilly enough, and almost taking 
the head off one of them who, noticing the baleful 
Judd mood, cheerfully inquired: “What is it, old 
chap — gout, liver, the market, or all three?” The 
market was in part responsible; the entire “list” 
had gone against him persistently and diabolically 
from opening to close. But the raking which Mrs. 
Treharne had given him during their ride on ac- 
count of his “daughtering” of Louise on the night 
before was mainly responsible for the bubbling 
rage which he was taking no pains to conceal and 
which he was adding to by extraordinarily short- 
intervalled stops at the club buffet. 

And so he’d been hauled over the coals again 
on account of that high-and-mighty daughter of 
Tony’s, had he? Judd reflected, his thoughts 
swirling in an alcoholic seethe of self-sympathy. 
Well, he was getting tired of that sort of thing — 


THE EDDY 


181 


d d tired of it. He hadn’t had a minute’s 

peace of his life on his visits at the house on 
the Drive since the arrival there of that top- 
loftical, sulky, ridiculously haughty daughter of 
Tony’s. Haughty about what? Haughty for 
what reason? What license had she to be 
haughty — especially with him, Judd? Wasn’t 

she living in his house? What the d , then, 

did she mean by flouting him? Yes, Jesse had 
been right; she had flouted him since the first 
day she’d met him. And that wasn’t “coming to 
him;” he didn’t deserve it. 

Didn’t he fairly shower money upon her 
mother? Didn’t her mother have his signed 
blank checks to fill out at her own sweet will 
and option? Didn’t he humor all of Tony’s 
extravagances without ever a word of com- 
plaint? Well, then! What the devil did Tony 
mean by snarling at him all the time about this 
daughter of hers that had come along and 
messed everything up? Anyhow, why shouldn’t 
he have called the young woman “daughter” if he 
felt like it? That wasn’t going to kill her, was it? 
He had been drinking a little at the time, anyhow, 
and it was a slip of the tongue; but even if it 
hadn’t been, what was the difference? What 
right did she have, anyhow, to look at him as if 
he were a woodtick? He couldn’t understand 
what Jesse saw in her; she was good-looking, of 


182 


THE EDDY 


course, but when that was said all was said; she 
had an unthawable disposition, hadn’t she? And 
a porpoise’s cold-bloodedness? 

But Jesse was entitled to his idiotic fancies; 
he, Judd, wasn’t going to interpose any obstacles 
in Jesse’s way. She needed taming, and Jesse’s 
reputation as a tamer was established. Leav- 
ing all that aside, though, she wasn’t going to 
stay around his house creating discord and giv- 
ing her mother cherished opportunities to “open 
up” on him whenever she felt like it. She 
would have to go somewhere else. He’d take 
care of her all right. He had no idea of ab- 
solutely turning her out; Tony wouldn’t have 
that, and, besides, there wasn’t anything mean 
about him. But he wasn’t going to be flouted 
any longer; wouldn’t have it; wouldn’t endure it; 
wouldn’t tolerate it. Fact was, he intended to 
have it out with Tony that very night. He’d go 
over to the house on the Drive and get the thing 
over with. No use in postponing it. 

Thus Judd, fuming, and already more than 
half drunk. 

“Get me a taxicab,” he ordered a club servant, 
and, with a final libation for the tightening of his 
resolution, he lumbered unsteadily into the taxicab 
and was catapulted to the house on Riverside 
Drive. 

The butler admitted him and smirked behind 



he’d go oyer to the house on the drive and get the thing over with 



THE EDDY 


183 


his back with the derisiveness of English servants 
in American households when he saw Judd hold 
out a miscalculating hand for the banister post and 
miss it by a foot, thereby almost going to his 
knees on the stairs. But he recovered his equili- 
brium, growling, and made his way into Mrs. Tre- 
harne’s sitting room. Heloise was there alone, 
reading a French comic weekly of extraordinary 
pictorial frankness with such gusto that she did 
not even rise when Judd partly fell into the room. 

Judd glared at her out of red eyes. 

“Why the devil don’t you get to your feet when 
I come in here, you jabbering chimpanzee?” he 
inquired of the by no means flabbergasted Heloise. 
She had often seen Judd thus and she was used to 
his expletives and his fondness for comparing her 
to the simian species on account of her French 
tongue. “Where’s your mistress?” 

“Madame has gone to the theatre,” said 
Heloise, giving Judd a view of a wide, unscreened 
French yawn. 

“Oh, Madame has, has she?” said Judd, apeing 
the maid’s tone with a drunken disregard for even 
the most ordinary dignity. “What theatre ?” 

Heloise shrugged. 

“What theatre?” Judd bawled at her. 

“How should one know?” inquired Heloise, dis- 
dainfully enough. “Madame did not say.” 

Judd plumped himself into a deep chair, cocked 


184 


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his evening hat at a little more acute angle over 
his left ear, fumblingly loosened the buttons of his 
overcoat, crossed his legs with grunting difficulty, 
removed his gloves, revealing the enormous dia- 
mond rings which he wore on the third finger of 
each freckled, pudgy hand; then glared at the un- 
ruffled Heloise again. 

“Is anybody at home?” he asked her. 

“Mademoiselle is here,” replied Heloise. “But 
she is retiring and is not to be seen.” 

“Oh, she’s not to be seen, hey?” snarled Judd. 
“Who says she isn’t to be seen? You?” 

Heloise shrugged again. She knew that her 
shrugs enraged him, but she was a dauntless maid 
of France. 

“You tell her that I want to see her, under- 
stand?” ordered Judd, thickly. “Want to see her 
right here and right now.” 

“Mademoiselle sent her maid out for the even- 
ing and left word that she was not to be disturbed,” 
protested Heloise. 

“I don’t care a continental hang what word she 
left!” raged Judd. “You tell her that I want to 
see her, here and now. You take that message 
to her or out you go, bag and baggage. I’m 
paying your wages.” 

Heloise, bestowing upon him a parting shrug 
which was artistically designed to inform him as to 
just how little she cared for him or his “wages,” 


THE EDDY 


185 


left the room and knocked upon Louise’s sleep- 
ing-room door. 

Louise, in a negligee and with her hair rippling 
silkily over her shoulders, was preparing for sleep. 
The afternoon’s reverie still possessed her. Mu- 
sing dreams lingered in her eyes. 

She looked up, not surprised to see Heloise 
enter. The French maid, devoted to Louise from 
the beginning, often came in for a chat when her 
mistress was out, to the jealous concern of Louise’s 
own maid. Now, however, Louise was struck with 
the light of wrath and disgust in Heloise’s fire- 
darting, eloquent eyes. 

“What is it, Heloise?” she asked. 

Heloise broke into objurgation as to “zat Jood 
beast ” — cochon rouge, she called him, explosively. 

“He demands that you come,” she said to 
Louise. “He is not himself; that is, he is himself; 
he is drunk.” 

“But what does he want with me?” asked 
Louise, apprehensively. Heloise could furnish 
her with no reply to that. “Of course I shall not 
see him.” 

Heloise, finger on lip, considered. She knew 
Judd exceedingly well, and she was acquainted 
with his violence when in his cups. She knew that 
he was quite capable of breaking in upon 
Louise’s privacy if she did not respond to his sum- 


186 


THE EDDY 


mons — even if he had to put his shoulder to her 
door. After a moment’s reflection, Heloise ad- 
vised Louise to go to him. He could not harm 
her, except perhaps with his tongue, and he would 
do that anyhow if she refused to answer his 
summons; Heloise would be hovering near to see 
that he offered her no other harm. Louise, who 
had the gift of becoming deliberate and cool in 
emergent moments, decided to take the maid’s ad- 
vice. She dressed hastily and Heloise quickly 
tucked her hair up. She was very regal, very 
much in control of herself, when she swept swift- 
ly into her mother’s sitting room and confronted 
Judd. 

Judd did not rise. Neither did he remove his 
rakishly-tilted hat. He still sat with crossed legs, 
and he was muttering hoarsely to himself when 
Louise entered. When he heard her rustled en- 
trance he dovetailed his fingers on the lower por- 
tion of his evening shirt, twiddled his thumbs, and 
gazed at her through his red, drink-diminished 
eyes. 

“Oh, so you came, eh?” hq^heezed, drily, con- 
tinuing to regard her with his bleary stare. 

“What is it you wish of me?” Louise asked him, 
meeting his gaze, but continuing to stand. 

“Oh, nothing in particular — nothing in particu- 
lar,” said Judd with the incoherency of intoxica- 
tion. Quickly, though, he took a tone of brazen- 


THE EDDY 


187 


ness. “You’re going to sit down, ain’t you? It 
doesn’t cost any more to sit down.” 

“I shall stand,” said Louise, immovable before 
him. 

“Oh, you’ll stand, hey?” sneered Judd. “All 
right, stand. I sent for you because, in the first 
place, I wanted to see if you’d come or not. And 
you’re here, ain’t you?” this with an air of drunken 
triumph. Louise made no reply. 

“Secondly,” went on Judd, scowling over the 
drink-magnified memory of his wrongs, “I sent 
for you to ask you what in blazes you mean by 
continually stirring up rows and rough-houses be- 
tween your mother and me? Hey? What’s the 
answer?” 

There was no answer. Louise, literally numb 
from the vulgar violence of the man, was bereft 
of speech. She faced him with her fingers tightly 
laced behind her back, and her face had grown 
very pale. 

“That’s what I want to find out from you,” 
went on Judd, uncrossing his legs so that he could 
lean forward in his chair and wag an emphasizing 
finger at her. “And there are some other things 
I want to find out from you. One of ’em is why 
the devil you think you’re licensed to treat me — 
me ! — as if I were a flunkey?” 

Louise retained her frozen attitude. She had 
the feeling of one being blown upon by icy blasts. 


188 


THE EDDY 


Even had there seemed to be any need for her to 
make reply, she could not have done so. 

“You’ve got a tongue, haven’t you?” demanded 
Judd, her silence adding to the rage into which he 
was deliberately lashing himself. “Don’t you try 
your infernal haughty airs on me any more, young 
woman. I won’t tolerate it. I don’t have to 
tolerate it. Didn’t they teach you manners at 
school? If they didn’t, by God, I’ll know the 
reason why ! I paid ’em to teach you manners !” 

Involuntarily Louise pressed her hands to her 
temples, for she felt suddenly faint. But she con- 
quered the faintness. The utter incredibleness of 
his words seemed to nerve her. 

“What do you mean by that?” she asked him, 
her voice sounding in her ears like that of some- 
one else. 

“Mean?” raged Judd, gripping the arms of his 
chair and half rising. “What do I mean? I 
mean what I say. I paid the people who educated 
you, or pretended to educate you, to drill some 
manners into you. And now I’m going to take a 
whole lot of pains to find out why they took my 
money under false pretenses 1” 

“Are you not beside yourself?” asked Louise 
quietly enough, though her thoughts were in a 
vortex. “Am I to understand that you really 
expect me to believe that you paid for my educa- 
tion?” 


THE EDDY 


189 


Judd flopped back into his chair and stared hard 
at her. Then he broke into a short, jarring laugh. 

“Will you listen to that?” he croaked, looking 
around the room as if addressing an invisible jury. 
Then, lowering his head and glowering upon 
Louise, he went on: “Am I to understand that you 
are pretending that you don’t know that I paid 
for your education?” 

“I did not know it,” said Louise in so low a 
tone that she could hardly hear herself. 

“Am I to understand,” brutally went on Judd, 
now entirely out of himself, “that you are pretend- 
ing not to know that I’ve been shovelling out 
money for you for nearly five years — ever since 
you were in pigtails? D’ye mean to stand there, 
with your damned outlandish haughtiness, and tell 
me that you don’t know that every hairpin, every 
pair of shoes, every frippery or furbelow that 
you’ve owned in that time, hasn’t been settled for 
by me? That you don’t know that the roof over 
your head and the bed you’ve slept in has been 
paid for by me? That you don’t know that the 
clothes that you’ve got on your back right this 
minute were bought for you by me?” 

It was the crudest moment in the girl’s life. 
Her senses were reeling. But, by an effort of pure 
will, of supreme concentration, she mustered her 
strength to withstand the shock. 

“I did not know these things,” she replied in a 


190 


THE EDDY 


voice that sounded in her own ears like a mere 
distant echo. “They are true? I was not told. 
Until this moment I had always supposed that my 
education and maintenance were paid for out of 
funds from — ” She could not mention the name 
of her father in the presence of this drink-inflamed 
brute; — “from other sources.” 

“Not by a damned sight,” roared Judd, relent- 
less, paying no attention to the girl’s drawn fea- 
tures and trembling lips. “I know what you’re 
getting at. But you’re wrong. There haven’t 
been any ‘funds from other sources,’ as you call it, 
disbursed for you for nearly five years. And 
that’s easy to explain, too. I wouldn’t have any 
‘funds from other sources’ dribbling along to an 
establishment I was maintaining. That’s why I 
chucked what you call the ‘funds from other 
sources’ back into the sender’s teeth.” 

Louise, under the impact of that final cowardly 
blow, might have fallen prone had not her mother, 
eyes alight with mingled rage and compassion, 
swept into the room at that instant and gently 
pushed her daughter into a chair just as Louise 
felt that her knees were giving way beneath her. 
Mrs. Treharne, standing stunned in the hall upon 
coming in, had heard Judd’s last few sentences; 
and she judged from them what he had been say- 
ing before her return. 

Judd’s jaw fell when he saw Mrs. Treharne, for 


THE EDDY 


191 


the moment imperious in her anger and her solici- 
tude for her daughter, sweep into the room in her 
trailing furs. But, after an instant, he brought 
his twisted teeth together with a snap and gazed 
at her with drunken dauntlessness. It was one of 
Judd’s hours when he was too far gone to think 
of surrendering even to her. 

“What have you done, you unspeakable brute?” 
Mrs. Treharne asked him, her voice trembling, as 
she stood facing him, one hand on Louise’s shoul- 
der. 

Louise looked up at her mother. 

“He has been telling me, mother, what I now 
believe to be the truth,” she said; “that I am in- 
debted to him for my schooling, my maintenance, 
my — ” She could not go on. 

Mrs. Treharne’s eyes blazed. 

“You low cad — you vulgar coward!” she fairly 
hissed at Judd. 

But Judd, for once, would have none of that. 
He rose unsteadily to his feet and stood swaying 
before her. 

“No more of that from you!” he thundered, 
the veins of his forehead standing out purplishly. 
“I know what I’ve said, and I stand for it ! Don’t 
you try to come that bullyragging business over me 
— I’m all through standing for that! You can do 
as you please, go as far as you like. But this is my 
house — don’t you ever forget that ! See that you 


192 


THE EDDY 


remember it every minute from this time on, will 
you?” and with a parting glare he strode to the 
door, tramped down the stairs, and went out, pull- 
ing the door after him with a crash. 

Mrs. Treharne, herself used to such scenes with 
Judd, but hideously conscious of what a horror this 
one must have been to an inexperienced girl less 
than three months away from the serene atmos- 
phere of school, sat upon an arm of Louise’s chair 
and began to stroke her daughter’s hair. 

“But why did you never tell me, mother?” asked 
Louise after a long silence. 

Mrs. Treharne, on the defensive, tried to devise 
excuses, but they were very feeble ones. She had 
not wanted to worry Louise by telling her; the 
girl had been too young to be told while at school, 
and, since her return, she had not had the courage 
to tell her; it would have done no good to tell her 
at any rate, would it? And so on. 

After a while Louise rose. 

“I can’t stay here, mother,” she said. “I am 
going at once.” 

“That is absurd,” her mother replied, flutter- 
ingly. “It is after midnight. You must not be 
hasty, dear. He had been drinking. Men are 
beasts when they drink. It will all pass over,” 
she added weakly. 

“No, it cannot pass over,” said Louise in a 
wearied tone. “I am going. I could not remain 



Page 192 , 






























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THE EDDY 


193 


here another hour. You must not ask me to. It 
is impossible.’’ 

“JBut, my child,” cried Mrs. Treharne, begin- 
ning to dab at her eyes, “it is out of the question 
— unheard of! There is no reason for it. These 
things happen everywhere. You must face life as 
it is, not as you have been dreaming it to be. Sleep 
with me tonight and think it over. You’ll view it 
all differently in the morning.” 

“I am going now, mother,” replied Louise, and 
her mother knew then that the girl’s decision was 
unalterable. 

“But where are you going at this hour of the 
night, child?” she asked, now weeping outright. 

“To Laura’s,” said Louise. Saying it, she was 
swept by a sudden wave of feeling. “Mother,” she 
went on in a broken voice, “come with me, won’t 
you ? Let us go together. I want to be with you 
all the time. I want to live with you only. I need 
you. We can be so happy together, just by our- 
selves! We can get a pretty little place some- 
where and be happy together, just you and I. And 
I have been so unhappy, so miserable, here ! 
Won’t you come with me — come now?” 

A beautiful hour had struck for that mother, 
had she but known it. 

But she released herself from Louise’s arms and 
shook her head, all the time dabbing, dabbing at 
her eyes with her little wad of a lace handkerchief. 


194 


THE EDDY 


“Don’t ask me such an absurd thing, Louise,” 
she replied. “Of course I can’t do anything so 
outlandishly foolish.” 

“Then I must go alone, dear,” said Louise, bit- 
ter disappointment placarded on her drawn face. 
“I wanted to be always with you. I never meant 
to leave you. But I can’t stay now. Won’t you 
come, mother?” 

Mrs. Treharne shook her head and sobbed. 
Louise gazed commiseratingly at the weak, tem- 
pestuously-crying little woman, and then went to 
her rooms. She called Laura on the telephone. 

“I am coming to you now, Laura,” she said. 

“You mean tonight, dear?” inquired Laura in 
her caressing contralto, refraining, with the wis- 
dom of a woman of experience, from giving 
utterance to any astonishment. 

“Yes, at once,” said Laura. “I shall take a 
taxicab and be there within the half hour.” 

“I shall be waiting, dear,” replied Laura. 

Louise, in hat and coat, bent over her mother, 
who had thrown herself weeping on a couch, and 
sought to soothe her. But her mother had only 
wild, broken reproaches for her for going away 
“so foolishly, so unnecessarily,” and Louise saw 
that her efforts to calm her were futile. So she 
bent over and kissed her mother’s tear-wet face, 
then walked down the stairs and out of the house 
to the waiting taxicab. She never put foot in the 
house on the Drive again. 


CHAPTER IX 


L AURA, her face flushed from sleep and a 
cheerful awakening, her burnished black 
hair in two great plaits that fell forward 
on her shoulders far below the waist of her 
negligee, tiptoed early next morning into the 

room, next to her own, where she had put 
Louise. But her tiptoeing was a considerateness 
wasted. Louise was wide awake. She had 

scarcely slept at all. The shock of her ex- 
perience had been heavier than her ensuing 

weariness, so that, for the greater part of the 
night, she had lain wide-eyed, gazing into the 
darkness; dozing once, she had been gripped by 
a hideous dream, in which she had stood paralyzed 
by terror, awaiting the approach, from oppo- 
site directions, of two gigantic reptiles, wearing 
the faces of Judd and Jesse. Laura noticed the 
dark rings under the girl’s feverishly bright eyes, 
and her heart glowed at the thought that Louise, 
quite as a matter of course, had sought asylum 
with her. 

When the girl had arrived at her apartment on 


196 


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the previous night Laura, far from questioning 
her, had pantomimed, finger at lip, that Louise 
was not to tell her anything then ; and Louise had 
been grateful for the fine delicacy of the remission. 

Finding Louise awake, Laura, smiling to match 
the sunlight that streamed through the curtains, 
and exhibiting none of the curiosity or jarring 
glumness of manner with which a woman of less 
tact might easily have intensified the misery of 
such a situation, sat on the edge of Louise’s bed 
and began to chatter as gaily as if her listener’s 
world had been swimming in rose. 

“My dear,” she said, stretching her satin- 
smooth arms high above her head in an abandon- 
ment of waking enjoyment, “I feel as chirpful this 
morning as a sparrow in a wistaria vine. Let’s 
talk until we get hungry. Let’s make plans and 
things. Plan number one: we are going abroad 
next week, instead of early in May. I can’t wait 
for May. I need things to wear at once. I am 
positively in rags and tatters, the Cinderella of 
Central Park West. How is that for one gorgeous 
plan?” It might easily have been thought, 
listening to her and studying her enthusiasm, that 
she was the girl and Louise the woman. But 
Louise, for all of her still throbbing memory of 
the night before, was infected with the older 
woman’s unquenchable cheerfulness. 

“You talk of going’ to Europe as if it were a 


THE EDDY 


197 


run out to the Bronx in your car, dear,” she said, 
smiling. “And am I really to go with you? At 

any rate, of course I must ask ” She had 

meant to say that she must ask her mother’s per- 
mission; but the thought rushed to her mind that 
in all likelihood her mother would be only too wil- 
ling to let her go. Laura divined her thought and 
rushed to her aid. 

“Oh, I shall do all the asking,” she interposed. 
“That’s another of my glittering specialties — ask- 
ing. I’m the most immoderately successful asker, 
I think, in all North America ; yes, and getter, too, 
I verily believe. Really, I can’t remember when 
I was refused anything that I out-and-out asked 
for. So I’ll arrange that. But with this stipula- 
tion: you’ll have to ask Mr. Blythe yourself.” 

“Mr. Blythe?” said Louise, wonderingly. The 
sound of his name somehow gave her an immedi- 
ate sense of uplift; but for the moment she failed 
to catch Laura’s meaning. “What is it that I must 
ask Mr. Blythe about, dear?” 

Laura gazed at her with skeptical eyes. 

“What is it we were talking about, Louise?” she 
asked, mischievously. “The Relation of the Cos- 
mic Forces to — er — Mental Healing? The Real 
Nub of the Suffragettes’ Cause? Child, you don’t 
really suppose that you could gallumph off to the 
continent of Europe with a ’frivolous, irresponsi- 
ble, happy-go-lucky person like me without first 


198 


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asking the consent of your guardian — or, at any 
rate, your guardian-to-be ?” 

Louise’s flush shone through her amused smile. 

“That is true, isn’t it?” she said simply. “Of 
course I must ask him.” 

“I am in a frenzy of fear, though,” went on 
Laura, affecting an exaggerated solemnity, “that 
the ogre will flatly put his foot down and refuse 
to let you go. I know that I should if I were he.” 

“Why, Laura?” asked Louise with such genuine 
wide-eyed innocence that Laura laughed outright. 

“Why?” she repeated in Louise’s tone. “Well, 
I haven’t the least doubt that I should be a great 
deal more selfish about it than he will be. Just 
because a man has to be such a horridly legal, 
dry-as-dust creature as a guardian, is that any par- 
ticular reason why he should become incapable of 
experiencing the entirely human misery called 
lonesomeness?” 

Louise had no reply for that except a little 
gesture of deprecation that quite failed to con- 
vince. 

“How could we possibly get ready to go abroad 
in a week, Laura?” she covered her confusion by 
asking. 

“My dear,” replied Laura, convincingly, “I 
could and would start for the Straits of Sunda in- 
side of twenty minutes if there were any possible 
reason why I should want to go there — if, for ex- 


THE EDDY 


199 


ample, there happened to be a dressmaker or mil- 
iner there whose creations I particularly fancied. 
The voyage to Europe is now a mere ferry trip. 
You speak as if we were still living in the Victor- 
ian period. In those days folks ‘made prepara- 
tions’ to go abroad — the dear, fussy, old-fashioned 
creatures! Now it is like riding to Staten Island, 
with the exception of the sleeps and meals in be- 
tween. One of the most delightful men I know 
goes to Europe every year with no other impedi- 
menta than a walking stick — he is so used to a 
cane that he must have it for his constitutionals 
on deck — and a toothbrush; he gets his changes 
of linen from the head steward — I believe he 
knows every head steward afloat; and he is such 
a cheerful steamer companion, because he is un- 
hampered by luggage, that it is a delight to be his 
fellow voyager. Once, when I was a young wo- 
man (“You are so aged and decrepit now, aren’t 
you?” murmured Louise.) I went on board a 
steamer to wish some friends bon voyage. It 
was rather a cheerless day in New York, with 
overcast skies. I thought of sunny Italy. And 
so I went along with them, in the clothes I was 
standing in, and I had the most enjoyable voyage 
of my life.” 

Thus Laura chattered on, eager to take Louise’s 
mind off the previous night’s experience which, 
even without having heard any of the details, she 
well knew must have been a trying one. During 


200 


THE EDDY 


the night Laura had decided to start within the 
week on the trip to Europe which she made every 
year. The climactic turn in Louise’s affairs, which 
had by no means been unexpected by Laura, had 
prodded her to this decision. She had meant to 
take Louise abroad with her early in May at any 
rate; now, however, that her young friend, whom 
she had come to regard with an encompassing af- 
fection, was in obvious distressing straits, an al- 
most immediate withdrawal of her from painful 
scenes would, Laura felt, be at least an attempt 
at a solution. A few months abroad would enable 
Louise to shake off the bravely-borne but none 
the less wearing depression which had taken pos- 
session of her when she found herself so unexpect- 
edly thrust into a horribly difficult situation — a 
situation which Laura now blamed herself for not 
having actively sought to terminate before the 
interposition of the incident, whatever had been its 
nature, which had caused the girl to leave the 
house on the Drive in the middle of the night. 
And Laura, meditating these things as she lay 
awake, declared in her heart that Louise should 
never again be subjected to a renewal of that 
ordeal. 

Without any questioning, Louise, after a little 
actual planning with Laura for the early trip 
abroad, told the older woman what had happened 
at the house on the Drive on the previous night. 
She went over the details calmly enough, grouping 


THE EDDY 


201 


Judd’s brutal utterances into a few phrases which 
presented the picture almost as plainly to Laura’s 
mental vision as if she had been actually present 
at what she knew must have been a scene suffi- 
ciently searing in its effect upon a girl yet under 
twenty and fresh from school. It was only when 
she came to her mother’s flaccid, vacillating part 
in the affair that Louise’s voice weakened a 
little. 

“She disappointed me, Laura,” said Louise, 
feelingly. “I would not say that to anybody else 
but you. But she did. I don’t know just what 
to think. I thought that, having returned in time 
to hear at least some of the things that were said to 
me, she would come with me when she saw how 
impossible it was for me to stay there. I can’t 
even guess why she did not. That was the worst 
part of it — her remaining there. And now I am 
afraid that I did wrong in leaving her. Perhaps 
there was something to prevent her leaving. It 
may be that if I had stayed on with her for a 
while longer she might have ” 

Laura interrupted her with a gesture. 

“Don’t say that, Louise,” she put in, earnestly. 
“You must not do yourself injustice. That 
wouldn’t be fair. Your mother is one of my old- 
est friends; we were girls together. But right is 
right. Your mother should never have permitted 
you to so much as set foot in that house. I am 
not disloyal to her in saying that. She her- 


202 


THE EDDY 


self knows in her heart that it is true. But, 
having been allowed to go there, you did your 
part; you played the game, as one says, without 
complaint; and you stayed as long as you could. 
You have nothing to reproach yourself for. Your 
mother herself, I think, will be fair enough to 
acknowledge that. And you are never to go back 
there. That, of course, is settled. The situation 
must work itself out in some other way. I feel 
perfectly confident that your mother will see it 
all in the right light, and before very long; prob- 
ably while you are abroad with me. She will miss 
you. And it is right that she should miss you. 
Missing you, she will come to a realization of 
what she is sacrificing for — what? That, dear, is 
my prediction as to the way it will all come out. 
But you must not think of reproaching yourself 
for the step you have taken, nor even dream of 
retracing that step.” 

During the forenoon Laura telephoned Blythe, 
giving him an outline of what had happened. 

“It was inevitable, of course,” was Blythe’s 
brief comment over the ’phone. “Since it had to 
come, I am glad that it is over with — better now 
than later. May I come up to see you?” 

“To see me — hypocrite!” Laura answered, 
laughing — and she could hear Blythe hastily 
and rather fumbling hanging up the receiver. 

Blythe arrived at Laura’s early in the afternoon 
and his^arrival was a signal for Laura to profess 


THE EDDY 


203 


burdensome housekeeping cares in a distant part 
of the apartment. 

This time Louise’s feeling in Blythe’s presence 
was not a mere vague shyness, but genuine em- 
barrassment. She had thought of him a great deal 
during the night, particularly of that which had 
passed between them during the ride in the Park. 
Now she flushed at the thought that she had even 
passively permitted such a thing, much less have 
seemed to invite it. Her mother’s position, and 
the stigma which, she could not but feel, that po- 
sition placed upon herself, now seemed, with the 
humiliating incident of the night before fresh in 
her mind, to forbid the continuation of any re- 
lationship between Blythe and herself other than 
that of guardian and ward. It was purely from 
a sense of consideration for Blythe, a man who 
had won his way in the world in the teeth of almost 
insuperable obstacles, that Louise resolved that 
there must be an abridgement of their gradually 
growing intimacy. She had sighed in making that 
mental decision, for the relationship had been very 
agreeable and — and something else which she 
could not quite analyze ; but she shrank from cer- 
tain intuitive forecastings involving Blythe’s pro- 
gress toward the goal he had set for himself, 
which she feared a continuation of their closer 
relationship might develop. 

Blythe was quick to notice her altered manner, 
expressed by a reserve which, with the penetra- 


204 


THE EDDY 


tion of an alert mind, he could not but see was 
studied. He was puzzled by it; but he attributed 
it, after a moment of rapid pondering, to the ef- 
fect of the shock from which he knew she must 
still be suffering. Nevertheless he was conscious 
of a sudden depression which for a while he found 
it difficult to throw off. 

Louise spared him the difficulty of making the 
first adversion to that which she knew was upper- 
most in his mind — her course, that is, now that she 
had voluntarily, but under the press of circum- 
stance, detached herself from an impossible en- 
vironment. More guardedly than she had related 
the incident to Laura, Louise told him of the 
affair; but he was more than able to fill in the grisly 
details. 

“What I cannot understand,” she said, not in 
any tone of reproach, but earnestly enough, “is the 
fact that I was not told, particularly after I left 
school, that I was so intolerably indebted to — to 
that man. My impression always was so different. 
I never doubted that my father was providing for 
me. I was given to understand that when I was 
a young girl, and I never thought anything dif- 
ferent It would have been difficult, of course I 
know, to tell me any such a thing while I was at 
school; but I can’t help but believe that I should 
have been told when I went to live in that house. 
I doubt if I could have stayed there had I known, 
even to be near my mother; I should have found 


THE EDDY 


205 


some other way of meeting her. It is unthinkable 
that I should be in that man’s debt. I shall not 
remain in his debt, at any rate, to the extent of the 
amount my father sent me recently. I shall use 
that, at all events, to help rid myself of such an 
intolerable obligation.” 

Blythe then explained it all to her: how her 
father had never ceased to make provision for her, 
even after Blythe had informed him that his re- 
mittances were being rejected; how, when he had 
seen her father in Honolulu, he had been in- 
structed to deposit the remittances as a fund for 
Louise’s future use, and he named the amount 
which he was holding for her. Louise’s eyes 
lighted up when she heard this. 

“I shall send the entire amount to that man,” 
she said, in precipitate decision, “to reimburse him 
for what he has expended for me.” 

Blythe was forced to repress a smile. 

“That decision does you credit, Louise,” he 
said quietly. “But it is out of the question. The 
man not only would not accept the reimbursement, 
but, in offering it, you would simply give him an- 
other opportunity to mortify you by returning it. 
That is what he would do. He is very rich, and 
he has the porcine pride of riches. He would 
keenly enjoy the flourish of thrusting back at you 
the offered reimbursement, just enjoy as he en- 
joyed — I hate to say it, but I must to make matters 


206 


THE EDDY 


clear — thrusting back the quarterly remittances of 
your father.” 

“But why did you not tell me these things when 
my father asked you to become my guardian?” 
Louise asked him. A natural curiosity, but no 
reproof, marked her tone. 

“Because I did not feel up to it,” Blythe re- 
plied plainly enough. “That would have involved 
telling you the whole miserable story. I could 
not do that. Nor could Laura. We talked it over 
and we found that neither of us was equal to so 
gruelling a task. It seemed better to let you 
gradually grasp the facts yourself. Our telling 
you would not have helped matters. Moreover, 
so far as I was concerned, I did not feel that I 
had the right to touch upon matters so intimate. 
It is different now — today. The proscription has 
been removed. I am now your guardian.” 

Louise gave a little start at his last words, and 
Blythe, trained in observation, did not fail to no- 
tice the increased lustre of her wide eyes, any more 
than he neglected to see that she was at some 
pains to quell words which he felt assured would 
have been phrases of gladness had she permitted 
herself to utter them. Why was she thus repres- 
sing her impulses? Blythe immediately concen- 
trated an acute mentality upon the problem. The 
answer, and the right one, came to him in a flash, 
as if by telepathic revelation : he understood the 
reason underlying her new restraint, which he per- 


THE EDDY 


207 


ceived, not without pleasure, she was having diffi- 
culty in maintaining. It was from a keener reali- 
zation of her mother’s position: Blythe felt so 
sure of it that he smiled inwardly and was com- 
forted. Her mother’s position was nothing to 
him! But how to convince Louise of that? He 
made poor progress of this factor of the problem 
in trying to study it while talking with Louise. He 
told her that he had only been notified that morn- 
ing that the court had appointed him her 
guardian. 

“Are you prepared to be severely disciplined?” 
he asked her. He felt in vastly better spirits 
since arriving at what he felt assured was the cor- 
rect solution as to Louise’s manifestly changed 
manner toward him. “I rather believe I shall in- 
sist upon your permitting me to pick out your 
frocks and hats. I think I shall have you change 
at once to Quaker garb.” 

Louise could not repress a smile at that. She 
caught herself longing to be on her former plane 
with him. But her fancied ineligibility, her some- 
what morbid consciousness that she was hedged 
in by circumstances which she had no right even to 
tacitly ask him to share with her, put a damper 
upon her temptation to resume her former manner 
with him. 

Blythe walked to the window and looked out 
over the Park for a silent moment. Then he 


208 


THE EDD Y 


thrust his hand into his breast pocket, brought 
out a photograph, and handed it to her. 

“I came upon the picture this morning in rum- 
maging through my safe,” he said to her. 

Louise gazed puzzledly at the photograph. It 
was that of a tall, distinguished-looking man with 
silvered hair and mustache, dressed in white linen; 
he was shown standing on the porch of a squat, 
wide, comfortable-looking bungalow, the open 
space in front of which was a riot of tropical 
verdure. 

Louise glanced up at Blythe, and her eyes filled. 

“You must not think it odd that I did not give 
it to you before this,” said Blythe, fighting a bit 
of a lump in his throat. “I’ve been spending at 
least two hours every day searching for it ever 
since — well, ever since I met you on the train,” 
he admitted, his cheeks tingling with the confes- 
sion. 

“When was it taken? And is he so — so glo- 
rious-looking as this?” asked Louise, her enthu- 
siasm over her father’s photograph — the first she 
had ever seen of him, for her mother had resent- 
fully destroyed the earlier ones — overcoming her 
hardly-maintained restraint. 

Blythe sat down beside her and told her about 
the picture. He had gotten it from her father 
upon the occasion of his visit to Honolulu nearly 
three years before. Blythe had been summoned 
to California on some legal business, and, a bit 


THE EDDY 


209 


run down from over work, he had made the six- 
day cruise down to Honolulu, partly for recupera- 
tion and partly to go over some affairs with 
George Treharne. Treharne had come from his 
plantations on the Island of Maui to meet him in 
Honolulu. Louise sat rapt for more than half an 
hour while Blythe answered her eager questions 
about her father. He had felt a delicacy about 
expanding on that subject so long as the girl was 
domiciled with her mother; now, however, that 
Louise had been literally forced to the severance 
of at least her constant propinquity to her mother, 
and, now, too, that he was her guardian in fact 
instead of in prospect, he felt at liberty to throw 
off that reserve ; and he keenly enjoyed the absorp- 
tion with which she listened to his account of her 
father, nearly every detail of which was absolutely 
new to her. 

“How I should love to see him!” Louise ex- 
claimed, sighing, when at length Blythe rose to 
leave. 

“I am promising myself the intense satisfaction 
and pleasure of taking you to see him, Louise — 
some day,” Blythe said, tacking on the last two 
words when he caught her scarlet flush. It was 
not until after he had spoken that he reflected that 
what he had said might easily be open to one very 
lucid and palpable interpretation; but that inter- 
pretation so fitted in with what he meant to en- 
compass, all conditions being fair and equal, that 


210 


THE EDDY 


he refused to stultify himself by modifying or 
withdrawing his words. And Louise’s beauty 
was heightened when she flushed in that way, any- 
how ! 

Laura, with the skillfully-assumed air of one 
who had been excessively busy, came in at that 
moment. 

“Well, Mr. Ogre-Guardian, are you going to 
be at the pier to wish us bon voyage ?” she asked 
Blythe. 

Blythe stared at her. Laura stared back at 
him. 

“Do you mean to tell me,” exclaimed Laura, 
laughing, “that, after you’ve been here more than 
a solid hour, Louise has not told you ? In heaven’s 
name, what else could you two have been talking 
about?” 

“Don’t keep me oscillating on this — this 
ten-thousand-revolutions-to-the-minute fly-wheel, 
please, Laura,” said Blythe, blankly. “What are 
you talking about?” 

“Then it is true that Louise hasn’t told you 
we are going abroad next week?” 

“Next week?” Blythe’s jaw fell. 

“Why, I thought surely she would have finished 
asking your guardianly permission — and every- 
thing by this time,” said Laura, shaking a finger 
at Louise. “But I can see how it is going to be : 
she means to wheedle me into asking her guardian 
all the terribly difficult things.” 


THE EDDY 


211 


“But are you really going so — so scandalously 
soon?” inquired Blythe, for a moment genuinely 
glum. “Why, New York will seem like some mis- 
erable tank town plunged in Stygian darkness 
without you and ” 

“Oh, finish it!” dared Laura when he came to a 
sudden halt. But Blythe did not, for already his 
mind was grasping the fact that the plan was a 
good one, as Laura’s plans generally were. He 
did not try to convince himself that he would not 
miss them both sorely; Laura for her cordial, 
unexacting friendship and camaraderie and Louise 

because He knew equally well why he should 

miss Louise, but there was a shyness about this 
man even in his self-communings, and so he did 
not go to the bottom of that in his summary re- 
flection on the project. Laura’s keen eye detected 
that there was something distrait in Louise’s man- 
ner with Blythe, and, wondering, she made another 
escape in order to permit Blythe to make his de- 
voirs to one instead of to two. Blythe took 
Louise’s hands in his and gradually, by mere silent 
compulsion, drew her averted eyes into a direct 
line with his own, which were smiling and alight 
with an utter frankness. 

“Louise,” he said, going straight to the point, 
“I know what is in your mind and why you are 
holding me at a little more than arm’s length. I am 
glad to say, although I am a little sorry that you 
do not already know it, that you are absolutely 


212 


THE EDDY 


wrong; not hopelessly wrong, because you are go- 
ing to see the matter differently when you are less 
troubled in mind than you now are. I wish such 
an idea had not entered your mind. I believe it 
would not have entered your mind had you known 
me better.” 

Louise, startled that he should have read her so 
clearly as his words denoted, replied, with no great 
conviction that what she said was exactly true : 

“Does not the very fact that you seem to under- 
stand so clearly furnish the best evidence?” 
But that sounded rather inconsequential to her, 
and she went on Hurriedly: “I don’t mean just 
that. Perhaps I do not know precisely what I do 
mean,” averting her head again in her confusion, 
“now that you ” and she came to a futile end. 

“Now that I read you aright, you were about 
to say,” said Blythe, smiling gravely. “Well, I 
am not going to be ungenerous enough to triumph 
over you because you have virtually admitted that 
you were wrong — for you have so admitted, 
haven’t you?” 

Louise remained silent, her head still averted; 
but her hands still rested in Blythe’s. 

“Haven’t you?” said Blythe; and she was con- 
scious that his grasp upon her hands was tighten- 
ing. 

Blythe peered around to catch a view of her 
face, and he saw that she was faintly smiling. 


THE EDDY 


213 


He did not let go of her hands, nor did she appear 
at all eager to have him do so. 

“I have an appointment for which I am already 
late, and I am keen to have a look at my watch,” 
went on Blythe, quite cheerfully, without in the 
least relaxing his possession of her hands. “But 
of course I can’t look at it — I can’t do anything 
but remain here for a week, say — until you tell me 
that you are wrong.” 

Louise turned her natural face upon him and 
nodded brightly — conquered, and willing to be; 
there was, she noticed, an inviting little hollow in 
his coat, between his left shoulder and the rise of 
his chest, which she vaguely imagined would be 
a very inviting spot upon which to rest, if even 
for a transitory moment, a tired head; Blythe was 
conscious of a decided response when he pressed 
her hands just before releasing them; and when he 
went out she felt that the room, somehow, had be- 
come a little darker than it had been. She knew 
that he had understood, and she appraised his fine- 
ness in telling her that she had been wrong at its 
true value; but she was not entirely convinced, 
and she recoiled from the thought of permitting 
him to make any sacrifice for her sake. But she 
was glad that he had divined what had been in her 
mind, and her heart gave a little leap when she 
thought that, if ever there was to be any computa- 
tion of or allusion to a sacrifice, it would be on her 
side, and not on his; she knew now that he was 


214 


THE EDDY 


above even the thought of entertaining, much less 
measuring, such a consideration. 

Her mother came to Laura’s late in the after- 
noon, very downcast, very plaintive on the sub- 
ject of how terribly she already had missed Louise. 
Judd, with his customary morning penitence, had 
seen her at noon and made his usual abject apol- 
ogy; and he had endured the lash of her scornful 
tongue with a shaky consciousness that his con- 
duct had been pretty outrageous even for him. 
He did not acknowledge how set back he was, how- 
ever, when Mrs. Treharne, a tirade over, let fall 
the fact that Louise had gone to Laura’s, and the 
additional fact that Louise, having been placed un- 
der John Blythe’s guardianship at her father’s 
direction, would be very well looked after and pro- 
vided for. But Judd wondered, nevertheless, just 
how these facts would dovetail with Langdon 
Jesse’s sweet scheme to have Louise relegated, 
under Judd’s provision, to the depressing and 
chastening surroundings of a “five-by-eight flat.” 

Louise’s heart went out to her mother when 
Mrs. Treharne, in an effusion of tears, told her 
how hideously lonesome the house on the Drive 
was and would continue to be without her; but the 
girl had difficulty in matching this with the unde- 
niable fact that, when she told her mother that she 
would be sailing for Europe within a week, Mrs. 
Treharne, drying her tears, offhandedly pro- 


THE EDDY 


215 


nounced that the plan was a very wise one and 
would be the best imaginable thing for Louise. 

Louise, as often before, was stunned by the pal- 
pable contradiction afforded by her mother’s tears 
over what she called her lonesomeness and, in the 
next moment, her dry-eyed approval of a trip that 
would place an ocean between them. She wanted 
to go with Laura and she meant to go ; but she was 
conscious of a sinking of the heart when she found 
that, far from seeking to deter her, her mother 
appeared not only willing but anxious to have her 
go. Mrs. Treharne’s one thought, of course, was 
that the trip would give her a breathing spell, 
“give her a chance to think,” as she futilely ex- 
pressed it to herself; for her life had become one 
continuous procrastination. Louise, she con- 
sidered, would be “broadened by travel” and 
sheared of some of her “old-fashioned notions.” 
And, while Louise was gone, she herself could 
“think things over” and block out a course. A 
misty, intangible idea of abandoning Judd already 
had crept into her mind, in her self-searching, self- 
contemning moments; perhaps, while Louise was 
across the sea, she might be able to evolve some 

plan whereby And here her musings halted 

when she came plumb upon the thought of the 
surrender of luxuries that her abandonment of 
Judd would involve, the scrimping and saving of 
a “narrow, smug existence with smug, narrow 
people.” Anyhow, Louise’s absence from the 


216 


THE EDDY 


scene would “give her time to think.” That was 
the main point. 

But Louise, who had been lonesome for her 
mother, now found herself lonesome in her 
mother’s presence. 

Judd met Langdon Jesse at the club a few 
nights later. 

“Judd,” Jesse sneered, “you are, all in all, about 
the most accomplished damned blunderer in the 
Western Hemisphere, aren’t you?” 

“That will be about all of that from you,” 
growled Judd in reply. He had got out of the 
cotton market with, as he put it, an “unpunctured 
pelt,” so that he had no present fear of the vindic- 
tive machinations of the younger man. “A civil 
tongue between your teeth henceforth in your deal- 
ings with me, or we don’t deal. Do you get that?” 

“Oh!” said Jesse, eloquently. He surrendered 
the whip hand with his customary deftness. “But 
you’ll remember, I suppose,” going on suavely, 
“that you told me that Miss Treharne was a 
virtual dependent of yours?” 

“Well,” snarled Judd, “supposing I really 
thought so? How about that?” 

“Oh, if you really thought so, why of course 
that’s different,” said Jesse, graciously. “But you 
were pretty wrong, weren’t you? You separated 
her from her mother on that presumption by bawl- 
ing at her as if she had been a chambermaid; 


THE EDDY 


217 


and all the time she was virtually, as she is now in 
fact, under the guardianship of that toploftical 
Blythe fellow; she is living with Mrs. Stedham, 
with whom she starts for Europe in a few days, 
and she is more than amply provided for by her 
father. In all candor, and between man and man, 
could you possibly have botched things worse than 
you did upon your mistaken premise?” 

“You mean botched the thing so far as you are 
concerned, eh?” growled Judd. “Well, things 
were botched for you in that direction before you 
ever started. You’ve been kicking around long 
enough to know when you’re left at the post; but 
you don’t know it, all the same. Anyhow, count 
me out of your confounded woman-hunting 
schemes in future, understand? I’ve got enough 
to do to attend to my own game. Play your own 
hand. But you’re butting your head against a 
stone wall in this one instance, let me tell you 
that.” 

“Is that so?” inquired Jesse, with no sign of per- 
turbation or discouragement. “Well, to adopt 
your somewhat crude metaphor, I’ll play the hand 
out, and I’ll show you the cards after I’ve finished. 
Will you want to see them?” 

“Oh, go to the devil,” virtuously replied Judd. 


CHAPTER X 


L ATE in the afternoon of the day before 
Louise and Laura were to sail, John Blythe, 
having fled his office and a great mass of 
work at an unusually early hour and without any 
conscientious scruples whatever, strode up and 
down, back and forth, the entire length of his 
apartment — barring the kitchen — many dozens of 
times. He subjected his hair to an absurd hand- 
tousling as he paced; he kicked up corners of the 
rugs and then kicked them into place again on 
the next trip back; he stopped at tables to pick 
up books, glancing at their titles with unseeing 
eyes and then tossing them back on the tables with 
a bang; once he picked up an ordinary match-safe 
that he had owned for years, and caught himself 
holding it out in front of him and staring curiously 
at it — but really far, far beyond it — as if he had 
never before clapped an eye upon it, and, emerging 
for a moment from that trance, he replaced the 
match-safe on the table with a flickering smile. 

Noticing all of which from the kitchen out of 
the corners of her solicitous and suspicious eyes, 
Sarah became worried. Sarah was the stout, grey- 
wooled colored woman who managed, not to say 


THE EDDY 


219 


ruled, John Blythe’s bachelor establishment, in- 
cluding John Blythe himself. She had been Blythe’s 
boyhood nurse, and, never having been entirely out 
of touch with him through all of his early strug- 
gles, she had returned to him when he had won 
his way and set up his solitary Lares and Penates. 
She was highly privileged. There were times, in- 
deed, when she exercised the actual veto power; as 
for example, when Blythe wanted to shift too early 
into lighter-weight linen, or sought to rush off to 
an appointment without his breakfast, and so on. 

Now, polishing a glass to give her hands some- 
thing to do, she appeared at the door of the 
kitchen, completely filling it, and waited for Blythe 
to stride back that way. So intense was his ab- 
sorption that he did not see her until she coughed 
remindfully. Then he looked up and at her — 
still without seeing her, as she well knew. 

“Yo’ all ain’t sick, is yo’, Mistuh John?” in- 
quired Sarah, gazing at him slantwise and showing 
a good deal of the whites of her eyes. 

Blythe didn’t hear her. He gazed right 
through her, and, thence on, through the rear 
wall of the kitchen. After quite a pause, however, 
it was borne in upon his consciousness that she had 
said something. 

“How is that, Sarah?” he asked her, coming to 
a standstill. 

“Ah said, Is yo’ tuk sick, suh?” repeated Sarah. 


220 


THE EDDY 


“Dis heah crazy, triflin’, no’count N’Yawk 
weathuh is ’nough tuh mek anybody tuhn ovuh an’ 
die, an’ Ah got de misuhy in mah haid mahse’f. Is 
yo’ got any fevuh, suh? Yo’ face looks raid on de 
tips o’ de cheeks.” 

Blythe, only half-hearing, felt tentatively of the 
“raid” spots on his cheeks, which, as a matter of 
fact, were decidedly flushed. Then he thrust his 
hands into his pockets and resumed his up-and- 
down pacing, saying: 

“Oh, I’m all right, Sarah. Not a bit under the 
weather. Just — er — fixing up a case, that’s all.” 

Sarah, polishing away at the glass, gazed in- 
tently at his back as he walked away. Then she 
slowly turned and re-entered the kitchen, mutter- 
ing to herself: 

“Can’t tell me no sich conjingulatin’ stuff — 
‘fixin’ up a case.’ De case dat boy is fixin’ up 
weahs petticoats an’ puffs an’ maybe one o’ dese 
heah D’rectory dresses — Ah reckon Ah can tell 
de symptoms !” 

Wherein, as to the main point of her suspicion, 
the sagacious Sarah was exactly right. 

John Blythe was indubitably, whole-heartedly, 
whole-mindedly in love with Louise Treharne. 
He knew that. He had known it for some time. 
That, however, in accordance with a by no means 
uncommon rule in such cases, was, he considered, 
an exceedingly unimportant factor in the problem. 


THE EDDY 


221 


The problem, briefly stated, was this: What did 
Louise Treharne think of him? He remembered 
now, with impatience, his words to Louise in the 
Park, when he had hoped that he might accept his 
“devotion as a man,” and her reply. His “devo- 
tion as a man?” That, Blythe reflected, might 
mean anything, especially to a girl placed in a 
difficult position and, as a natural consequence, in 
need of all the devotion of any sort that might be 
offered her. Had Louise understood his words 
as he had meant them? Blythe, with the custom- 
ary self-depreciating pessimism of the lover, was 
afraid she had not. He reproached himself for 
not having made his meaning more plain — another 
grisly pastime in which love-possessed males in- 
dulge for the purpose of making themselves even 
more acutely miserable. Immediately atop of this 
regret that he had not been more explicit, he flared 
at himself and decided that he would have been 
an inexcusable scoundrel had he done anything of 
the sort. It would have been taking a mean and 
an unworthy advantage of her in her distress. 

Then he pondered the few words of hers that 
had so thrilled him. What, after all, had they 
amounted to? She had said that she was ready 
to accept his devotion. What of that? Devotion, 
how? Devotion, from whom? Why, her guard- 
ian-to-be, of course! How else could her words 
possibly be viewed by a sane man? What right 


222 


THE EDDY 


had he to seek to torture her simple utterance into 
anything more meaningful, more solacing to his 
wretched self-esteem? At this point of his cog- 
itations Blythe became quite indignant with him- 
self. 

Here he was (he reflected, figuratively hiding his 
head) , a man of thirty-two who had been brushing 
elbows with the world’s people nearly all his life, 
and wearing a few more than the average number 
of scars to show for it — here he was, actually 
thinking of pouncing upon a girl of nineteen, who 
had scarcely forgotten the discipline of school; 
actually contemplating the imbecility (why, worse 
than that — the crime !) of hurling himself and his 
love at her, before she had so much as had a 
chance to meet any other man or men, before, in 
fact, she had had even a chance to turn around — 
for hadn’t he (accidentally or not) begun to 
vaguely form these idiotic notions on the very day 
she was leaving school? And what would be her 
natural implication? That he was seeking to take 
advantage of her inexperience and her helpless- 
ness, solely on the strength of his being her legal 
guardian ! 

He had been all wrong (he mentally maun- 
dered on) the other day at Laura’s when he 
had attributed Louise’s perfectly proper restraint 
with him to her keener realization of her 
mother’s ostracized status in its bearing upon her 


THE EDDY 


223 


own position. What had Louise’s mother’s status 
to do with Louise? And hadn’t he been a com- 
plaisantly self-satisfied numbskull to suppose that 
this was the reason for Louise’s obvious aloofness 
on that day ! The truth was (still he drivelled on, 
never sparing himself) that she had come to a 
perfectly proper realization of how presumptuous 
he, Blythe, had been in his attitude toward her, 
and she had distinctly meant to indicate to him in 
an unmistakable manner that any aspirations of 
that kind on his part might as well be immediately 
suppressed, inasmuch as they were foredoomed to 
fail. True (taking again for the moment his own 
case as plaintiff), the love of any reasonably 
honest and fairly successful man for a woman 
ought to be at least worth considering, and Louise 
Treharne was the first woman he had wholly 
loved; other little affairs, scattered through the 
flown years, had been mere inconsequentialities, 
the mutual amusements (and so mutually under- 
stood) of an hour, a day, a week, perhaps, at 
most, a month. Three months before Blythe 
would have smiled, if he had not laughed outright, 
if any smirking imp had whispered to him that 
the time was quite close at hand when he would 
be shamefully neglecting his decidedly important 
practice because of his work-disqualifying absorp- 
tion in thoughts, not to say dreams, of a woman. 
And yet here he was, supposedly a self-contained, 


224 


THE EDDY 


level-headed man of the law, a man rigorously 
trained in the austere school of experience — here 
he was, sighing like a furnace, drawing meaning- 
less pictures on blotting pads when he should have 
been preparing briefs, forgetting his meals, to 
Sarah’s profound worriment and scandalization, 
and walking the world in a veritable schoolboy 
trance ! Blythe, in lucid moments, caught himself 
smiling inwardly at the thought of it. Was he 
sorry that such a thing had come to be? He 
quickly beat down that trivial question, tentatively 
submitted by his subconsciousness. Schoolboy, 
furnace-sigher, sentimentalist, imbecile, what not 
— he was glad! 

Ceaselessly pacing the apartment, then, and 
mulling the matter over, first condemning himself 
for his presumptuousness and then wondering in 
a blank sort of a way if Louise herself took this 
view of his attitude, Blythe found himself on the 
horns of his life’s dilemma. It would not be so 
bad, he thought with a catch at the throat, if she 
were not going away; but the thought of the wide 
Atlantic rolling between them caused his heart to 
thump against his ribs and incited him to rumple 
his hair still more outrageously. 

At length, seized by an idea, he walked into his 
study, closed the door after him, sat down at his 
desk telephone, and called up Laura. Very 
promptly he heard her musically rising “Well?” 


THE EDDY 


225 


“Greetings, Laura,” he said. “This is your 
insane friend, John Blythe.” 

“Greetings, Deserter Blythe,” replied Laura. 
“You have not been to see us for an age. And 
how long have you been insane?” 

“For several months, I believe. I am hardly a 
competent witness as to that.” 

“I am so distressed to hear it — when your 
career and — and everything looks so promising, 
too!” 

“ ‘Everything?’ Define ‘everything.’ ” 

“I haven’t the gift of being specific. You have. 
What, then, is the most convincing manifestation 
of your insanity?” 

“I am thinking of taking a great chance; pre- 
maturely, and therefore insanely.” 

“You are talking rationally enough. Perhaps 
your madness is a sort of recurrent mania, with 
lucid intervals?” 

“No, there are no lucid intervals. At this mo- 
ment I am obsessed by a fear of the perils of the 
sea.” 

“That is odd, considering that you are not go- 
ing to sea. Are you?” 

“No; but you are — and she. Is she with you 
now?” 

“No; she is in her room writing a letter to her 
father, the first she has ever written to him. A 
little sad, is it not? I am in my dressing room, 


226 


THE EDDY 


quite comfortable, thank you, with my elbows on 
my writing desk; and so there is no danger of in- 
terruption. What is it you wish to tell me, John? 
Or ask me, perhaps?” 

“It is something both to tell you and to ask 
you. In about an hour from now I want to ask 
Louise if she will marry me. That’s the telling. 
The asking is this: Would that be a fair thing 
to do?” 

“Such Druid-like deliberation! You speak, 
John, as if you were leading up to asking one for 
a cup of tea !” 

“Do I? Well, I am mindful of this somewhat 
open medium of communication. Believe me, I 
feel anything but deliberate. But my question: 
Would it be fair?” 

“How could it possibly be viewed as anything 
else but fair?” 

“Because the circumstances are unusual. In the 
first place, I am almost the only man she knows — 
that she has had a chance to know. Then, I am 
her guardian. Would it not be rather presump- 
tuous, not to say downright unfair, for me to take 
advantage of these things?” 

“That, I think, is what might be called an 
obliquely conscientious view, John.” 

“Then the disparity in our ages.” 

“The difference between nineteen and thirty-two 
hardly constitutes a case of May and December. 


THE EDDY 


227 


Another wholly trivial consideration of yours. 
Thirteen years’ difference — and, by the way, 
haven’t I heard you affirm that thirteen is your 
lucky number?” 

“Finally, I haven’t the least imaginable reason 
for supposing that she has ever thought of me 
in that respect.” 

“Haven’t you? How perfectly unimportant! 
Isn’t that quite the rule? How many men ever 
believed they were considered as possibilities until 
they endured the travail of finding out?” 

“You are riotously optimistic this afternoon. I 
wish I were in the same humor. I think I shall 
be in need of a mood like that very soon.” 

“What a glorious opportunity for me to work in 
that antique bromidiom, ‘Faint heart ne’er won,’ 
and so forth. But I shan’t. In an hour, you 
said?” 

“About an hour.” 

“Don’t expect to see me. I am horribly busy 
packing silver and things. Perhaps I may see you 
a moment before you leave. If not, then at the 
steamer in the morning.” 

“I wish I had words to tell you what a trump 
you are, Laura.” 

“I wish I had words to tell you how delighted 
I am, John.” 

“Not prematurely delighted, I hope, good 
friend- At this moment I find myself believing 


228 


THE EDDY 


that the perils of the sea are nothing to certain 
perils of the land. Goodbye.” 

“Goodbye. Don’t lose confidence in your lucky 
number — even if you do call it a ‘disparity!’ ” 

It would have been the obvious thing for Laura, 
after her telephone conversation with Blythe, to 
at least intimate to Louise that she was upon 
the verge of an event quite universally and cor- 
rectly deemed of considerable importance in a 
young woman’s life — her first proposal. Most 
women in Laura’s place would have done so. But 
Laura’s dislike for the obvious was almost a part 
of her religion. She had none of the benevolent 
marplot in her composition. She made it a point 
never to interfere with symmetrical sequences. 
Her own unhappy marital experience had by no 
means bereft her of sentiment; and she felt that 
a girl about to receive an offer of marriage should 
be entitled to enjoy the surprise — and in this case 
she knew it would be a surprise — inhering to so 
important an occasion. So Laura, although she 
visited Louise in her room after her telephone talk 
with Blythe, said nothing about it; but she craftily 
intimated, in order that Louise might look her 
best, that she would not be greatly surprised if 
Blythe were to drop in. The intimation was suf- 
ficient. Louise, a very human woman, promptly 
proceeded, as soon as Laura returned to her own 
quarters, to correct even her most trifling dis- 


THE EDDY 


229 


arrays; so that when Blythe (astonishingly con- 
forming to Laura’s prophecy, Louise thought) 
arrived she looked very lovely in a one-piece dress 
of Quaker-grey rajah, with a band of grey velvet, 
which somehow suggested to Blythe the insignia 
of a princess, around her wonderful hair. She 
was at the piano, striving, soft pedal down, to 
extract musical sense from Strauss’ “Salome” (im- 
possible task!) when Blythe came in. 

He noticed her grey dress at once. 

“It is a comfort to have such a tractable, obe- 
dient ward,” he said, studying the dress approv- 
ingly when she rose to greet him. “Here, a little 
less than a week after I threatened to insist upon 
your adopting the Quaker garb, I find that you’ve 
voluntarily assumed it — the color, at any rate. I 
know some guardians who would envy me.” 

Louise, quickly at ease — which had been 
Blythe’s purpose in beginning with persiflage — 
smiled with a woman’s usual deprecation of a 
complimented costume. 

“Seeing that I have had this dress for more 
than a year,” she said, “my obedience must have 
become an unconscious habit before I knew you.” 

Blythe, a trained hand at sparring, took advan- 
tage of the opening. 

“Before you knew me, perhaps, Louise,” he 
said. “But not before I knew you. Aren’t you 
forgetting that I knew you when you still believed 
in Kris Kringle and Hans Andersen?” He sighed 


230 


THE EDDY 


with rather too smiling an assumption of melan- 
choly. “That reflection, I confess, makes me feel 
pretty aged.” 

“Does it?” asked Louise. “You forget that, if 
it makes you feel aged, it should make me feel at 
least middle aged, don’t you? And I believe in 
Santa Claus and in fairy tales yet, I think.” Then, 
resuming the first thread: “It seems singular that 
there should have been a time when you knew me 
and I didn’t know you ; that is, to remember you. 
For I didn’t remember you at all on the train 
that day. Come to think of it, you didn’t remem- 
ber me, either, until you were reminded — that 
telegram, you know. An odd chance, was it not?” 

“So odd,” said Blythe, “that I catch myself 
wondering what my life had been before and what 
it would be now if — ” He paused, already grop- 
ing for words; — “if I had missed that train.” 

Louise, far from missing his meaning, grasped 
it so acutely that Blythe caught the tell-tale color 
mounting to her face. 

“And now I am wondering,” he went on, gaz- 
ing for comfort at his nails, “since we are on the 
subject, whether my having known you for such a 
long, long time confers upon me the privilege of 
— well, of being entirely candid with you?” 

“I should expect candor, in any case — from 
you,” said Louise, trying desperately to concen- 
trate her mind upon something quite matter-of- 
fact in order to keep her color down. 


THE EDDY 


231 


“Why, particularly, from me?” said Blythe, 
grasping at straws. 

“Oh, I can hardly say — because you are the em- 
bodiment of candor, or candor itself/’ said Louise. 
“Aren’t you?” 

“I don’t know,” he answered as if really in 
doubt about it — as he was. “It seems to me that 
if I actually possessed that quality in such a high 
degree, I should have proved it to you, Louise, 
before this. Proved it, for example, in the Park 
the other afternoon.” 

Louise knew quite well what he meant. More- 
over, it never occurred to her to pretend that she 
did not know. 

“Are you sure that you did not?” she asked him, 
flushing, but with a direct enough gaze. 

“I am afraid that I did not,” said Blythe, ner- 
vously rising and facing her. “Perhaps it was as 
well, too. For the first time in my life I am in 
more than one mind as to whether a certain sort 
of candor is always desirable.” 

Having thus plunged into the domain of the 
purely ethical, Blythe could scarcely have expect- 
ed an offhand reply. As a matter of fact, he got 
no reply at all. 

“What I am striving to say, I suppose, Louise,” 
he went on, taking himself a little better in hand, 
“is that, after you sail tomorrow, I am going to be 
more lonesome than I have ever been in my life 
before.” 


232 


THE EDDY 


“Is that so hard to say?” Louise asked. 

“Not when it is rewarded by so helpful an an- 
swer,” said Blythe, conscious of a throbbing at his 
temples. 

“I do not find it in the least hard to say that I 
shall miss you,” said Louise, frankly enough; 
nevertheless, to give herself countenance, she 
picked up from the table a little carved ivory tiger 
and examined it with great apparent curiosity. 

“Miss me for — for my guardianly wisdom and 
ghostly counsel?” said Blythe, his wide smile vis- 
ibly nervous. Then, when there was a pause, he 
pressed the point: “Is that it, Louise?” 

Her silence did not imply affirmation, and, the 
throbbing at his temples increasing, Blythe knew 
it. He bent over her chair, gently but firmly re- 
moved the ivory tiger from her hands, took one 
of them in his own, and said: 

“Listen to me, Louise. I am fearful, if I do 
not plunge ahead, of becoming entangled in a 
weave of subtleties. I don’t want to be incoher- 
ent, even if my excuse would be that I became so 
while taking a desperate chance. I haven’t the 
least idea what you think of me — I don’t mean as 
your guardian and interested friend, but as a man 
very susceptible to human impulses. But I am not 
debarred from finding out. And I should have no 
right to ask you such a question before telling you, 
as I tell you now, that I love you.” She rose as 
he spoke, her hand still tightly grasped in his, 


THE EDDY 


233 


and their eyes mingled. “You have set a new 
light to glow within me. I am conscious of a new 
propulsion that I never knew before — that I did 
not believe existed until I met you as a woman 
grown. It means everything to me — the world 
and all. I do not know that I am fair in saying 
this to you. I am incapable of judging. I do 
know that I want to be fair. After all, there is 
no unfairness in my simply telling you that I love 
you. It would be different, I think — but you are 
to judge of that — if I were to ask you to marry me 
— yet. But that, Louise, is what I came here to 
ask you.” 

There is no eloquence, however ornately 
phrased, to compare with that of a man or a 
woman who is altogether in earnest. Louise 
thrilled under the quiet, but, as she knew, deeply- 
felt words of this man whose clear-cut, rugged 
face, as he spoke, became positively handsome. 
She placed an impulsive hand on his arm. 

“I told you that I should miss you,” she said 
haltingly, but with a womanly sweetness that 
moved him like a harp-chord. “And I could not 
miss you if I did not care for you? I do care for 
you — as much as I esteem and honor you ; and that 
is a great deal. I have not yet asked myself, I 
think, if I love you. It may be that I do. If to 
miss you dreadfully when I do not see you every 
day — and, until now, I had not seen you for nearly 
a week! — is — is that, then perhaps I — ” 


234 


THE EDDY 


Blythe, fighting, as if in actual conflict with 
something tangible, the temptation to take her in 
his arms, grasped her other hand. His face was 
very close to hers, and her curved, girlish lips sent 
his blood swirling with their maddening proximity. 
But he held himself in a vise, knowing that the 
hour had not yet struck for their contact of lips. 

“It is enough that you care for me, Louise,” 
he said, hoarsely fervid; and he felt as weak as 
a man who has successfully come through a great 
peril. “I could ask no more ; I ask no more. Your 
caring for me is, I know now, more than I ever 
hoped or dreamed. It is enough — for now. It is 
a start.” He smiled vaguely at the homeliness of 
his phrase. “I scarcely know what I am saying, 
Louise. But it doesn’t much matter what a man 
says, does it, when he is happier than he has ever 
before been in his life?” 

She raised the hand which had been resting on 
his arm and took hold, with thumb and forefinger, 
of a button of his coat. The unconscious little in- 
timacy set his pulses to throbbing again. 

“I shall know when I come back,” she said to 
him with a simplicity that was almost quaint, 
“whether — whether my caring for you is more 
than just that. I believe that it is, but — but there 
are reasons — you know what they are — that re- 
strain me from owning it, even if I knew posi- 
tively; which I do not, yet, John.” 

John! 


THE EDDY 


235 


A quiver ran through the man, which, as she 
still was unconsciously toying with the button of 
his coat, she could not help but feel. 

“Louise,” he said, bending so close to her that 
he felt her cool, fragrant breath upon his cheek, 
“I want you to call me that; but not again now. 
There must be an interval — tonight, say — for me 
to become used to it. I warn you of my irresponsi- 
bility if you call me that again before tomorrow. 
And I am not minding, my dear, about what you 
do not know positively. Neither am I presuming 
upon it. You have made me happy enough. 
Everything else can wait. You are not committed. 
I wouldn’t dream of holding you committed. Your 
life is still all your unpromised own. I tell you 
that it is enough for me now — it will be enough 
for me hereafter, if nothing else is to be — to know 
that I am even cared for, have been cared for, by a 
woman like you. I am going now. My heart is 
raging with love and honor for you; I want to get 
out underneath the sky; feel the cold upon my face 
so that I shall know I am not dreaming. Goodbye, 
dear, until I send you away from me — send you 
away, not with wretchedness and despair in my 
heart, but with hope, and light, and happiness — 
tomorrow!” and he pressed her hands, gazed at 
her with wide, kindling eyes, and went reeling 
from the room, as one who seeks a secure footing 
after many days at sea. 


236 


THE EDDY 


Laura, by design, was standing in the doorway 
of her sitting room when he passed unsteadily out. 

“Well?” she said to him. “Did the ‘disparity’ 
number win, John?” 

He stopped, gazed at her for an instant un- 
seeingly, then shook himself together and grasped 
her outstretched hands. 

“I may be a John o’ Dreams, dear friend,” he 
said to her huskily. “In fact, I am sure that I 
am, right now. But it is worth a little delirium to 
find that, after all, I am not actually insane,” and 
he strode out, Laura watching him with a dimpling 
face. 

After a while Laura went in and found Louise 
standing musing before a window, seeming to 
watch the twilight settling upon the vaguely green- 
ing Park. Laura threw an arm around the girl’s 
shoulder and kissed her. 

“Did he tell you, dear?” Louise asked, turning. 

“Not in words,” replied Laura. “But one sur- 
mises. The air has been charged with it. I 
know, of course, that he has been worshipping you 
as did the shepherd of old a distant star. And 
you, heart of hearts?” 

“I seem, somehow, to have been loving him all 
my life,” said Louise. 

“Did you tell him so?” asked Laura. 

“I am afraid that he, too, surmises,” said 
Louise, smiling shyly. 


CHAPTER XI 


A MERICAN letters P’exclaimed Laura, turn- 
ing the packet over eagerly. “Some rainy 
afternoon — which means, probably, this 
afternoon, even if the sun is shining smokily now 
— I am going to write a brief but enthusiastic 
essay, ‘for private distribution,’ on how good 
American stamps look on American letters ad- 
dressed to Americans who are not in America — 
long may she wave !” and she sorted over the just- 
brought letters with fluttering fingers. 

“What a lot of America in one sentence!” said 
Louise, her own eyes alight at the bulgy little 
packet of letters from overseas. “I wish,” she 
added a little wistfully, “America were as near 
as your patriotism is genuine.” 

“Don’t 77” heartily agreed Laura. “Could 
anything be better calculated to inspire patriotism 
in the American bosom than an occasional inspec- 
tion of Europe — and particularly an occasional 
residence in London ? All Americans possessed of 
the steamship fare should be forced by law to visit 
Europe — particularly London — at least once. 
Then there would be no further trouble in getting 


238 


THE EDDY 


soldiers for our army. All of the tourists by man- 
date would become so patriotic that they would 
enlist just as soon as they got back to the United 
States !” 

Then they fell upon their United-States-stamped 
mail as if the envelopes had contained anxiously 
awaited reprieves or dispensations, and for the 
next quarter of an hour the only sounds in the 
room were the crackling of paper and the ab- 
sorbed, subdued ejaculations to which women give 
utterance in perusing letters. 

The murk-modified morning sunshine of early 
June in London filtered wanly through the win- 
dows of their rooms at the Savoy. Very 
close to the consciousness of both women was 
the keen recollection of glorious Junes in the 
United States, with over-arching skies of sapphire, 
unstained for days at a stretch even by the fleeciest 
of golden clouds. Louise was confessedly lone- 
some. Laura, who had her London almost at her 
fingers’ ends, was lonesome, too, but not con- 
fessedly so. It would be too much to ask a sea- 
soned Londoner from New York to admit such 
a departure from the elemental rule of cosmopoli- 
tanism. Laura, in London or anywhere else in 
Europe, was lonesome in the abstract, so to speak. 
Her method of giving expression to her feeling 
was to comment — when no Europeans were of her 
audience, of course — upon the superior comforts 


THE EDDY 


239 


and joys of life in the United States, which, to her, 
meant New York almost exclusively. 

Louise shared the almost inevitable feeling of 
genuine lonesomeness and unanalyzable oppression 
which overcomes, to the point of an afflictive nos- 
talgia, most Americans of whatever degree who 
find themselves for the first time in European cap- 
itals. They had spent their first fortnight in Lon- 
don; and Louise had only been saved from com- 
plete dejection during that period by the gayety — 
somewhat studied and reserved, but still gayety — 
of Laura’s troops of friends, English and Ameri- 
can, in the city that, for the socially unacclimated 
American, is the dullest and most hopeless in all 
Europe. Paris, whence they had gone from Lon- 
don for a month’s stay, had been made endurable 
to Louise by her close fellowship with Laura in 
the older woman’s incessant battlings with the 
milliners and makers of dresses. Victory had 
never failed eventually to perch upon Laura’s ban- 
ners at the termination of these conflicts; but the 
intervening travail had given her young compan- 
ion more than enough to think about and thus to 
ward off an ever-recurring depression. She did 
not call it “homesickness,” even to herself; for by 
this time she had become, if not used, at least re- 
conciled to the thought that she had no real home. 

One of the least true maxims of all of those 
having perennial currency is that which de- 


240 


THE EDDY 


dares that “All good Americans go to Paris when 
they die.” Most Americans, if the truth could be 
tabulated, are poignantly disappointed with Paris. 
It is a city where American men of a certain type 
feel that they have almost a Heaven-bestowed 
license to “throw off responsibility.” But “the 
morning after” knows neither latitude nor longi- 
tude, and it is just as dismal and conducive to re- 
morse and good resolutions in Paris as it is in any 
other quarter of the irresponsible world. It takes 
an American man about a week to become 
thoroughly disillusioned as to Paris. The Ameri- 
can woman, who, like women the world over, must 
preserve her sense of responsibility at all times, 
even in the French capital, discovers her disap- 
pointment with and her weariness of the over- 
lauded Paris in considerably less time than a week. 
Louise found it unutterably tiresome, artificial, 
insincere, absurdly over-praised. Now they had 
been back in London for three weeks, and she was 
beginning to wonder when Laura would give the 
“pack-up signal” for the return to New York. 
Whenever she circuitously led up to such a sug- 
gestion, however, Laura told her how ridiculous 
it would be to return to New York in June, at the 
height of the London season; besides, there were 
thousands upon thousands of people in Lon- 
don whom Laura wanted Louise to meet; and 
Louise (Laura would go on) must fight to over- 


THE EDDY 


241 


come her Londonphobia, because, after all, Lon- 
don probably would be on the map as a sort of 
meeting place for peripatetic folk for quite a 
long time to come ; whereupon, with fine feminine 
inconsistency, Laura would round upon London 
for its primitiveness in the supplying of ordinary 
comforts, for its incurable smudginess, for the 
mediaeval complaisance of its populace, and for a 
hundred other matters that made it a mere “wide- 
ly-spraddled” hamlet in comparison with her be- 
loved New York. 

Additionally, there had been an utter absence 
of the querulous note, and an unwonted tone of 
positive sadness, in her mother’s letters that grave- 
ly disquieted Louise. Her mother’s self-revela- 
tions on paper hitherto had been characterized by 
a sort of acidulous recklessness; her letters to Lou- 
ise while the girl was at school had been long- 
drawn out epistolary complaints, the pages running 
over with the acridness of a woman at variance not 
only with her world but with herself. But the half 
dozen and odd letters which Louise had received 
from her mother since leaving New York had been 
of an entirely different character. Their tone de- 
noted, not the indifference which proceeds from 
the callousness of surrender, but the long-deferred 
awakening of a maternal instinct and a maternal 
conscience. They were filled with reproaches, not 
for others, but for herself. In them, too, Louise 


242 


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perceived a vein of hopelessness, as of one who 
has been aroused all too late to the evils and dan- 
gers of a self-wrought environment, a self-created 
peril, which sorely disturbed her daughter. 

Louise’s parting with her mother had been ten- 
der enough on both sides. The girl had said, sim- 
ply enough, that she was going away for a while in 
the hope that there would be an adjustment, a 
righting, of all things awry with her mother before 
her return. She felt her helplessness, she added, 
even to make herself a helpful instrument toward 
such an adjustment by remaining near her mother; 
but she hoped and believed that before she came 
back — And Louise had been able to progress 
no further. Nor was there any need. Her 
mother, troubled even beyond the relief of tears 
by her daughter’s words, had taken Louise in her 
arms and cuddled her as if she had been again a 
child; and her last words had been, “Everything 
will be changed, dear — the slate will be cleansed, 
and we shall start hand in hand again — before you 
get back. Depend upon that. It is odd, I sup- 
pose, that I am beginning to remember my duty 
to you as a mother before I have made a start 
toward seeing my duty to myself as a woman. But 
the two awakenings go together, Louise, I find — 
as you shall see when you return.” Louise had 
been quick to detect the implied promise in her 
mother’s words; and her main reason for not being 
insistent with Laura upon an earlier return was 


THE EDDY 


243 


that she wanted to give her mother plenty of time 
to redeem the tacit pledge bound up in her part- 
ing words. 

Her letters from Blythe had been perfervid va- 
riations — the effort at restraint being almost 
humorously visible between the lines — upon the 
one theme, the leit motif of which was: “We are 
to be married: when?” The fact itself, it will be 
observed, was masterfully taken for granted; the 
time only remained to be mutually agreed upon, so 
it appeared to Blythe. 

It was from such a letter as this that Louise 
now looked up and gazed pensively at the reddish 
rays of smothered London sunshine flickering, 
with the movement of the curtains, upon the rug. 
Laura herself, just having finished a far more in- 
formative letter from Blythe, caught the pensive 
expression and not unnaturally associated it with 
the still open letter on Louise’s lap. 

“Of course the man is impatient, dear,” she 
said to Louise, weaving without effort into the 
subject matter of the girl’s reflections. “But you 
must not mind that. Being impatient — at such an 
interesting juncture of their poor, benighted lives, 
I mean — is good for them. Really, it is the best 
thing that can possibly happen to them. It chastens 
them, teaches them the benignities, the joys of — er 
— abnegation and renunciation and things. By the 
way, Louise,” veering about with diverting insta- 
bility, “when do you really and privately mean 


244 


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to get rid of the man by marrying him?” 

Louise, not without an effort, shook herself out 
of her reverie, folded her letter from Blythe with 
an odd sort of deliberation, and looked frankly 
enough at Laura. 

“It is not certain, dear,” she replied, with no 
irresolution of tone, “that I shall ever marry him.” 

Laura regarded the girl with a gaze of perfectly 
unaffected stupefaction. 

“I wonder,” she said, as if to herself, “if the 
acoustics of these London rooms can be so atro- 
cious, or if I am really becoming so old that my 
hearing already is affected? Say that again, child. 
It isn’t possible that I could have heard you cor- 
rectly.” 

Louise was unable to repress a slight smile at 
the extraordinary bewilderment which was visible 
on Laura’s face, but her tone was distinct enough 
when she repeated: 

“It is far from a certainty that I shall marry 
him at all, Laura.” 

Laura rose from her deep chair, gathered her 
“getting-up gown” hastily about her, crossed over 
to where Louise was sitting, placed an arm about 
the girl’s shoulder, and gazed wonderingly into her 
eyes. 

“It is impossible,” she said, “that you two are 
quarrelling across the wide Atlantic? I shall cable 
John Blythe this very hour! It is his fault! It 
must be his fault!” and she rushed to her escri- 


THE EDDY 


245 


toire and pretended to fumble for her cable blanks. 

“Of course I know you haven’t the least idea of 
doing any such a thing,” said Louise, earnestness 
showing through her composure. “Won’t you 
please stop your aimless ransacking and come over 
and talk with me?” 

“But,” said Laura, seating herself by Louise, 
“I am afraid I am too anxious to scold somebody 
— either you, here and now, or John Blythe, by a 
few stinging words sent under the sea, or — or any- 
body I can lay my tongue or pen to ! Really, I 
am baffled by what you say, Louise. Of course 
the man has asked you time and again, since we’ve 
been over here, to marry him?” 

“He scarcely writes about anything else,” re- 
plied Louise, smothering a smile? over Laura’s in- 
tense but uninformed earnestness. 

“And don’t I know” pursued Laura, with a 
mystified rapidity of utterance, “that he made his 
incoherent, almost unintelligible declaration to you 
on the very day before we sailed — didn’t I see him 
as he left, treading on air, and hear him emit 
the entranced gibberish that customarily mounts 
to a man’s lips at such a time? And you received 
his declaration as if you had been timing its 
arrival, and you told me two minutes after he had 
gone that you loved him. Then what in the wide 
world is the — ” Laura threw up her hands with a 
baffled gesture that was almost comic. “I confess 


246 


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myself completely daunted, dear. Won’t you tell 
me what it is all about?” 

Louise regarded Laura with steady, reflective 
eyes. 

“You know how I appreciate your fine, generous 
impulsiveness, dear,” she said to the older woman. 
“But you must have thought, haven’t you, that it 
would not be fair for me to marry John Blythe?” 

Another film of mystification appeared on 
Laura’s widened eyes. 

“Fair?” she almost whispered in her amaze- 
ment. “How do you mean — ‘fair’? Fair to 
whom — to yourself or to John?” 

“To him,” said Louise. “Of course it would 
not be fair to him. I cannot see how there could 
be two views as to that.” 

Laura, arms folded, rose and lithely crossed the 
room several times, knitting her brow. Then she 
sat down again beside Louise. 

“I think I know what you mean, child,” she 
said. “But of course you are wrong. Utterly, 
hopelessly, pitiably wrong. He isn’t that sort of 
a man. You should know that, dear.” 

“I don’t underestimate him — far from that,” 
said Louise. “It is just because he isn’t that sort 
of a man, as you say, that I shrink from the 
thought of being unfair with him — of permitting 
him to do himself an injustice.” 

“But,” said Laura, “he is not a cubbish, hap- 
hazard lad. He is a man — a real man. He knows 


THE EDDY 


247 


and gauges the world. More and better than that, 
he knows himself. I should have difficulty in re- 
calling the name of any man who knows his mind 
better than John Blythe does his.” 

“I know that, Laura,” said Louise. “But his 
unselfishness is too fine a thing to be taken advan- 
tage of. He has made his way unaided. He has 
had a long fight. He will never cease to mount. 
Why should I hamper him?” 

“Hamper him!” exclaimed Laura. “Child, 
how can the woman a man loves hamper 
him?” 

“Your partiality causes you to generalize, dear,” 
said Louise. “My case — our case, if you will — 
is entirely different.” She took a turn up and down 
the room and then confronted Laura calmly. 
“Don’t you know what the world — his world — 
would say if he married me?” 

Laura shrugged impatiently. 

“The ‘They Sayers’ !” she exclaimed. “The 
‘They Sayers’ say this, they say that, they say the 
other thing. And what does their ‘They-Saying’ 
amount to?” 

“It would amount to nothing at all in his esti- 
mation — I am only too sure of that,” replied 
Louise. “But a man who is making his way in the 
world must even take heed of the ‘They-Sayers,’ 
as you call them. He cannot ignore them. His 
unselfish impulse would be, not only to ignore 
them, but to flaunt them; and all on my account. 


248 


THE EDDY 


It would, I think, be simply contemptible for me to 
permit him to do that.” 

Laura studied for a moment, then shook her 
head despairingly. 

“My dear,” she said, “you are the first girl I 
ever knew deliberately to erect barriers between 
herself and the happiness that rightfully belongs to 
her. What, in Heaven’s name, has your mother’s 
departure from — from rule to do with you? How 
has it, how could it, ever involve you, or come be- 
tween you and the man — the big-minded man — 
who loves you and whom you love? Tell me 
that.” 

“It could not come between us” replied Louise. 
“But the world — the very ‘They-Sayers’ you men- 
tion — could and would use it as a thong to punish 
him. And that is the one thing I could not have. 
I am the daughter of my mother. I am not very 
experienced, but I know how the world views these 
things. The world does not draw lines of demar- 
cation where women are concerned. Its ostracism 
is a very long and heavy whip. Its condemnation 
does not take the least heed of mitigations. I can 
speak plainly to you, dear — you are of course the 
only living person to whom I would say these 
things. But, if I were to permit John Blythe to 
marry me, can you not hear the gruelling com- 
ment — comment that, while it might not actually 
reach my husband’s ears, he could not fail to be 
conscious of? They would say that he had mar- 


THE EDDY 


249 


ried a girl whose mother had been openly main- 
tained by a man — a man in the public eye — whose 
wife was living. They would go farther and say 
— which of course is the simple truth — that I had 
lived for a time under the roof maintained by that 
man. And, with such things to go upon, how 
could the world possibly reach any other conclu- 
sion — granting, as you must, the knack the world 
has for leaping at conclusions — than that John 
Blythe, a growing man, a man destined for dis- 
tinction, had made a tremendous mistake in his 
marriage? Of course you understand. I have 
been wanting to say these things to you for a long 
time, but I could not summon the courage. I 
wanted to say them to John on the day before we 
sailed; but I could not.” 

Her voice broke, and she gazed out of the win- 
dow to hide the tears that stood in her eyes. 
Laura, so strongly moved that she deliberately 
forced herself to think of inconsequentialities to 
keep back her tears, wrapped her arms about the 
girl. 

“My dear,” she said, “I am not, I fear, as reli- 
gious, as reverent a woman as I should be. But 
I do not believe that God will keep a woman like 
you and a man like John Blythe apart. That 
would be a deviation from His all-discerning rule 
in which I simply could not believe. I don’t admit 
that you are right. I don’t say now that you are 
wholly wrong. But, through the very nobility of 


250 


THE EDDY 


the view you take, a way shall be found. Never 
doubt that, child. I know that in some ways — 
many ways — the world is awry enough. But I 
know, too, that there is not enough injustice in all 
the world to keep you from the arms of the man 
who loves you and is beloved by you.” 

There were two topics in John Blythe’s letter to 
Laura that gave her more than a day’s material for 
reflection. One of them concerned Louise’s 
mother. 

“Mrs. Treharne summoned me a few days ago, 
and in the evening I went to the house on the 
Drive,” Blythe wrote. “There seemed to be noth- 
ing in particular as to which she wished to see me 
— except that she was good enough to intimate 
that she had noticed my ‘interest’ in Louise. (‘In- 
terest!’ — when that very evening I’d been cursing 
the slow progress of the art of aviation, which 
made it impossible for me to fly to London out of 
hand — out of wing, I mean.) Really, Laura, I 
think the depressed little woman merely wanted 
to have a talk with somebody about Louise, which 
was why she sent for me. She looks in shocking 
health. If I read aright, I think she is at least at 
the beginning of some sort of a decline. Better 
not tell Louise this — just yet. There are reasons 
why I think it would be better for Louise to remain 
abroad with you for a while longer. One of the 
reasons is this: I gather that Mrs. Treharne is 


THE EDDY 


251 


pretty nigh through with Judd. She as much as 
told me so. I was touched by her lack of reserve 
in speaking to me of this matter. Louise was 
right. Her mother, as Louise prophesied to you, 
is undergoing the miseries of an awakening — a 
singularly bitter awakening in her case, I fear. I 
felt and feel intensely sorry for her — she was 
never wrong at heart, but was caught in the eddy 
of circumstance. 

“She hinted, not vaguely, but quite directly, that 
she was upon the verge of a complete change in 
her environment — and the intertwined remarks 
denoted that her keenly-felt humiliation in the 
eyes of her daughter was at the bottom of the 
contemplated change, whatever it is to be. I am 
very confident that it is to be a withdrawal from 
the protection, if one could call it that, of Judd. 
It is too bad, isn’t it, that this did not come just a 
few months earlier? But (here’s a bromidiom 
for you!) better late than never! Think what 
distress such a withdrawal would have spared 
Louise if it had happened before the child quit 
school ! 

“But enough of if-it-had-beens. The point is 
that Louise, I feel very sure, has accomplished 
a wonderful regeneration — the regeneration of 
her own mother ! Could there be anything 
more unheard-of, more marvelous, than that? 
But it is merely of a piece with the influence which 
Louise has upon everybody. You know that badly- 


252 


THE EDDY 


batted-around modern word, ‘uplift’? It applies 
actually, I think, to but one human being in the 
world : Louise. I mean that everybody who comes 
even slightly under her influence experiences that 
sense of ‘uplift.’ I know that I do! And even 
you, my dear Laura, even you . . .” 

(“Of course the dear headlong creature is 
right,” thought Laura when she read this, “but 
isn’t it hard to picture the self-contained, occasion- 
ally even austere John Blythe raving so! But 
they’re all alike. I suppose that even Alexander, 
Caesar, and Charlemagne privately raved the same 
way over their sweethearts!”) 

“So you will see,” Blythe went on in his letter, 
“why it is better that Louise should remain on 
the other side with you until matters work them- 
selves out here — until, in essence, her mother com- 
pletely clears her skirts of the wretched Judd en- 
tanglement; and that, I think, is something very 
imminent. It will be a joy for Louise to be freely 
and unrestrainedly alone with her mother when 
she comes back. You understand, of course. So 
stay over there for another month at least, won’t 
you, Petrarch’s Laura and the Laura of all of 
us? . . . 

“A few forenoons ago I came perilously close to 
getting a bit of needed exercise by throwing a man 
bodily out of my office — and this will seem the 
more startling to you when you remember my 
almost lamb-like non-aggressiveness. I think, 


THE EDDY 


253 


though, I should have gone the length of throwing 
him out of the window had I not mentally visual- 
ized, in an unaccustomed access of caution, the 
large, rampageous red headlines in the afternoon 
newspapers: ‘Struggling Young (?) Lawyer 
Hurls Famous Financier From Fifth Story Win- 
dow,’ etc., etc. 

“The man was Langdon Jesse, whom of course 
you know. (Sometimes I wish you did not know 
so many sinister persons, but perhaps you can’t 
help it.) Probably you are aware that I don’t like 
the Jesse individual. I don’t believe I am a victim 
of a prejudice as to him, either. He is a waxy, 
doughy person who makes the pursuit of women a 
hobby as decenter men make hobbies of golf, bil- 
liards, cigars and so on. I do not lean to the con- 
demnatory tone where men are concerned, but this 
man’s record is too besmudged and his personality 
too repulsive even for my amiable, non-Pharisaical 
(I hope) taste. I have known him in a general 
sort of a way for a number of years, but have 
always been at some pains to make it clear to him 
that I preferred the sight of his back. 

“He lounged in upon me the other forenoon, 
very oily and desirous of exhibiting to me his some- 
what rhino-like brand of savoir-faire , and he told 
me that, inasmuch as he was leaving for Europe 
directly, he thought he would ask me if I, as the 
guardian of Miss Treharne, would be willing that 
he should extend the tourist’s usual civilities and 


254 


THE EDDY 


courtesies to that young lady. Can you imagine 
a more imbecile question? Naturally, I was as- 
tonished to find that he had even met Louise, and 
you may hold yourself in readiness to be very 
severely spoken to when you return because you 
did not inform me of it. Seriously, I am inordi- 
nately sorry that Louise ever did meet him. Of 
course I gave the fellow what the reporters call 
Very short shrift.’ I can’t remember ever having 
been more annoyed. The impudence of this 
loathly Eden Musee Lothario, knowing (as he 
certainly must have known) that I was perfectly 
familiar with his record and character, coming to 
me on such a mission ! He was upon the pin-point 
of hinting that a note of recommendation from me, 
submitting him to the fair opinion of you and 
Louise, might enable him to offer the two of you 
certain somewhat prized civilities not easily obtain- 
able — when I, without the least attempt at hinting, 
indicated the general direction of my door and 
gave him a view of my back. 

“I haven’t the least notion as to what the fel- 
low’s actual purpose was, but if, as he claims, he 
really has met Louise, I am perturbed to think that 
presently he will be in the same hemisphere with 
her. (I would include you in my perturbation, 
only I know how thoroughly well able you are to 
crunch such objects with a mere word, if not, in- 
deed, a simple lifting of the eyebrows.) Of 
course he will not now have the temerity to call 


THE EDDY 


255 


upon you in London. But if he does exhibit such 
hardihood, and in any way attempts to annoy you 
or Louise with his ‘prized civilities/ you will let 
me know at once, of course — by cable, if you think 
it necessary. I don’t know why I have permitted 
and am permitting myself to be disturbed by this 
individual’s inexplicable little machinations (his 
whole life, in business and in private, is one huge 
machination), but I have been and I am. Write 
me just how he contrived to meet Louise, won’t 
you?” 

Laura, in reading this, felt considerable com- 
punction over the fact that she had not told Blythe 
of Louise’s unavoidable meetings with Langdon 
Jesse and of the attentions which he had attempted 
to force upon her. She had not done so because 
she had frankly feared the possible consequences 
of Blythe’s quick-blazing anger. While she would 
have been willing enough to commit Jesse to the 
corporeal handling of a physically adept man like 
John Blythe, she had no means of knowing in ad- 
vance whether the story of such a chastisement, if 
it took place, would become public; and as Louise 
had come under her own protection very soon 
after her final encounter with Jesse, Laura had felt 
that, as the Jesse incubus probably had been dis- 
posed of for good and all, it would be better not 
to disquiet Blythe by telling him anything about it. 
She knew that Louise had not mentioned Jesse to 
Blythe out of a feeling of plain shame that she 


256 


THE EDDY 


had been put in the way of meeting a man of his 
stamp. But Laura, after re-reading that part of 
Blythe’s letter referring to Jesse, found herself 
vaguely uneasy at the thought that even then he 
was on his way to London. She determined not to 
say anything about it to Louise. She also deter- 
mined that London was going to remain large 
enough for Louise and herself and ten thousand 
Langdon Jesses; which, interpreted, means that 
she had not the remotest idea of bolting for it be- 
cause of Jesse’s impending arrival. Laura also 
concluded to obey Blythe’s injunction to say noth- 
ing to Louise as to her mother’s changing affairs. 
She longed to tell the girl of Blythe’s forecasting 
of the approaching dissolution of the relationship 
between her mother and Judd; but she had learned 
the time-biding lesson, and she disliked to arouse 
hopes within Louise’s mind that might not, after 
all, have fruition. Moreover, she had frequently 
had occasion to test Blythe’s judgment, and she 
had always found it sound. 

“But I wish John Blythe would take a vacation 
of a fortnight or so and run over here,” she caught 
herself meditating. “He would lit into the situa- 
tion beautifully at the present moment and in some 
moments that I seem to feel approaching. But 
there never was a man yet who could recognize the 
psychological moment even when it paraded before 
his eyes — much less grasp it by intuition.” 


CHAPTER XII 


N OT alone from John Blythe had Langdon 
Jesse suffered a rebuff in his attempt to 
gather ammunition, in the form of inti- 
mate and more or less mandatory credentials, for 
his European campaign, in which Louise Tre- 
harne figured as the alluring citadel of his sinister 
ambition. First he had tried Louise’s mother 
with that purpose in view; and in that quarter he 
had been treated to one of the surprises of his by 
no means uneventful life. 

Jesse’s method of reasoning, in approaching 
Mrs. Treharne on such a mission, was in no wise 
subtle ; it was, on the contrary, as plain and pointed 
as a fence-paling. It all started from the out- 
right premise that Jesse ‘‘wanted” Louise Tre- 
harne and thoroughly meant to “have” her — for 
Jesse had the merit (negative enough in his case) 
of never attempting to deceive himself as to his 
eventual purposes where women were concerned. 
Louise, of course, had plainly given him to under- 
stand that she despised him. That, however, was, 
in Jesse’s view, a negligible detail. It would make 
his final conquest all the more satisfying. Many 


i 


258 


THE EDDY 


women who had begun by disliking him and frank- 
ly questioning his motives had ended by yielding 
to him; whereupon, after basking in the joys of 
triumph, he had taken a revengeful pleasure in 
casting them into what, in his self-communings, 
he brutally termed his “discard.” 

It would be the same, Jesse thoroughly believed, 
in Louise’s case. She now represented to him a 
difficulty to be surmounted, a transaction to be 
successfully carried through. The weakness in 
the armor of men of the Jesse type is that they 
have little or no imagination. They foresee mere- 
ly results; and their handling of the means to an 
end often is singularly clumsy and unadept. In 
regarding all women, of whatever class, as mere 
palterers with virtue and self-respect, Jesse con- 
sidered that he was justified by his experience with 
women; but he made the egregious mistake of sup- 
posing that his own experience with women 
established a criterion, a formula, from which 
there could be no departure. 

A week or so before he contemplated going 
abroad, mainly for the purpose of continuing his 
besiegement of Louise, Jesse dropped in at the 
house on the Drive one evening. He was glad to 
find Mrs. Treharne alone. He was not unmindful 
of his boast to Judd that he would victoriously 
overcome what, in his Boeotian imagining, he 
really deemed Louise’s “prejudice” against him; 


THE EDDY 


259 


and he preferred to lay his course without any 
Judd finger on his chart. 

Mrs. Treharne, now thin and frail-looking, no 
longer from banting, but from the conflict with 
conscience that been consuming her ever since her 
daughter’s departure, received him coldly enough. 
Not the least of her self-scornings since Louise 
had gone away had centered upon her complai- 
sance in tacitly permitting her daughter to be pur- 
sued by a man of the Langdon Jesse type. 

“I am leaving for England,” Jesse found early 
occasion to announce. 

Mrs. Treharne, very languid and tired-looking, 
did not find the announcement sufficiently im- 
portant to call for comment. 

“Louise, I believe, is in London?” pursued 
Jesse, sensing, without perturbation, the chill Mrs. 
Treharne was purposely diffusing. 

Mrs. Treharne gave him a level, penetrating 
glance. 

“Miss Treharne, I think, would not be inter- 
ested in knowing that you possessed information 
as to her movements,” she replied, with studied 
indifference. 

Jesse smiled and stooped to stroke a dozing 
spaniel. 

“What have I done, Tony?” he asked after a 
pause, looking up with a dental smile. 

“You have presumed to employ Miss Tre- 


260 


THE EDDY 


harne’s first name, after having met her, I be- 
lieve, not more than three times. Don’t do it 
again,” replied Mrs. Treharne in a tone that, 
while quiet enough, had a ring in it that was utterly 
new to Jesse. Jesse, seeming by his manner to 
take the rebuke in a chastened spirit, occupied 
himself again with the spaniel’s silky coat. 

“I seem,” he said, finally breaking the oppres- 
sive silence, “to have found you in a somewhat 
Arctic humor. Still, that should not be allowed 
to congeal an old friendship. It cannot be that 
you, too, are beginning to misunderstand me, as 
Miss Treharne has from the beginning?” 

“Miss Treharne should not have been allowed 
to meet you at all,” returned Mrs. Treharne. “I 
leave you to imagine how bitterly I condemn my- 
self now for not having at least screened her from 
that.” 

“You say ‘now,’ ” said Jesse. “Why, particu- 
larly ‘now?’ ” 

“That,” replied Mrs. Treharne, “is my affair.” 

The time, of course, had arrived for Jesse to 
make the best of a poor departure. The man, 
however, was of a surprising obtuseness as to such 
details. 

“And yet I came this evening,” he said, adopt- 
ing a tonal tremolo which was intended to convey 
the idea that he was sorely put upon, “to offer, 
through you, any poor courtesies that I might have 


THE EDDY 


261 


at my command to make Miss Treharne’s stay in 
England agreeable.” 

Mrs. Treharne shrugged impatiently. 

‘‘Spare yourself these posturings, if you please,” 
she said. “Miss Treharne has made it plain 
enough that she detests you. Are you waiting 
to have me tell you that I applaud her judgment?” 

An ugly sneer flickered across Jesse’s features. 
At length the barbs were hitting home. But he 
effaced the sneer and twisted it into a forced 
smile. 

“What I can’t understand is why you received 
me at all this evening, if this is your feeling — your 
newly-formed feeling — toward me,” he said, quel- 
ling the hoarseness that proceeded from his re- 
pressed anger. 

“I confess to having entertained a certain cu- 
riosity, perhaps a certain uneasiness, as to your pur- 
pose in calling at all,” promptly replied Mrs. Tre- 
harne. “It is the first time you have been here 
since my daughter’s departure. I have been sort- 
ing over certain of my mistakes since she went 
away. I have been considering them, too, from a 
different angle than any you could possibly under- 
stand. Not the least of these mistakes, as I have 
told you, was in permitting my daughter to ex- 
change as much as two words with you. Happily, 
it is not too late to rectify that mistake, at least. 
She is well protected. I need not tell you that if 


262 


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you should have the temerity to attempt to call 
upon her in London she would instruct the flunkeys 
to cease carrying her your card. I think there is 
no more to be said?” Mrs. Treharne rose and 
assumed the attitude of dismissal. 

This time Jesse, also rising, did not essay to 
erase the sneer from his wrath-flushed features. 

“What is all this — a scene from some damned 
imbecile play?” he demanded, completely throw- 
ing off the mask. “Are you trying to regale me 
with a rehearsal of the flighty mother turned vir- 
tuous? Don’t do that. That isn’t the sort of 
thing you could reasonably expect me to stand for 
from Fred Judd’s kept wo ” 

“Say that if you dare!” exclaimed Mrs. Tre- 
harne, stepping close to him and transfixing him 
with blazing eyes. 

Jesse, out of sheer timidity, broke off at the 
exact point where she had interrupted him. As 
she stepped to the wall to ring, he put on his hat 
with studied deliberation and patted it to make it 
more secure on his head. Thus, with his hat on, 
he spoke to her. 

“I suppose your solicitude for the — er — the 
what-you-may-call-it of your auburn-haired daugh- 
ter is natural enough, probably being based upon 
something that you, and you alone, know,” he said, 
sidling, however, toward the door as he spoke. 
“But it is wasted solicitude, let me tell you that. 


THE EDDY 


263 


She has lived here with you, hasn’t she? Well, 
that fact will about settle her, you know. There’s 
no downing that. And after awhile she’ll give up. 
She won’t be able to stand the stigma. None of 
them can stand it. It would take a superwoman 
to endure, without herself surrendering, the igno- 
miny of having lived under this roof. Don’t for- 
get that.” 

Then the butler, answering the ring, appeared at 
the door. Mrs. Treharne raised a limp arm and 
pointed to Jesse. 

“This man,” she said to the butler, “is not to 
be admitted to the house again as long as I am in 
it.” 

The butler inclined his head with butler-like 
gravity, detoured to get behind Jesse, and Jesse, 
patting the top of his hat again to emphasize, in 
the menial’s presence, the insult of wearing it, 
stalked down the hall. 

The broken, faded woman tottered to her sleep- 
ing room and fell upon a couch in an agony of 
tears. 

It was on the day following this scene that Jesse, 
inconceivably persistent in the pursuit of such a 
purpose as he had in mind, and now roused by 
obstacles to the point where he swore to himself 
that he would “win out,” made the call at Blythe’s 
office which the latter purposely glossed over in 
describing it in his letter to Laura. 


264 


THE EDDY 


Jesse’s purpose in seeking out Blythe was two- 
fold. In the first place, he wanted to measure the 
man who, he knew, had been appointed Louise’s 
guardian. He only recalled Blythe in a general 
sort of a way, and he wanted to “size him up” 
from this new angle. He was aware that Blythe 
was not only the guardian but an admirer of 
Louise, and he wanted to ascertain, from the con- 
tact of an interview, whether Blythe’s admiration 
was of a piece with his own; the manifestation of 
a mere predatory design, that is to say; for men 
of the Jesse type are ever prone to drag the mo- 
tives of other men to a level with their own. Sec- 
ondly, if he found, as he hoped to find, that Blythe 
was a mere supple and sycophantic young lawyer, 
eager to succeed, and therefore capable of being 
impressed by a call from a man looming large in 
the financial world, Jesse prefigured that probably 
Blythe, by means of credentials that would have 
the weight of a guardian’s advice, might very eas- 
ily aid him in his “little affair” (so he thought of 
it) with Louise when he reached London. Jesse 
was not in the least fearful of the consequences, so 
far as his standing with Louise was concerned, of 
his unmasking in the presence of her mother. He 
was under the impression that Louise had left the 
house on the Drive at odds with her mother and 
that no correspondence existed between them. So 


THE EDDY 


265 


that he felt sure that Louise would not hear from 
her mother of his brutality toward her. 

It took Jesse something less than thirty seconds, 
when he called upon Blythe, to discover that that 
young lawyer was neither sycophantic nor supple, 
and that, so far from being impressed by a visit 
from Jesse in his capacity of financial magnate, 
Blythe was coldly but distinctly hostile toward him. 
The interview had terminated with startling ab- 
ruptness. After having mentioned Louise’s name 
once, and been forbidden to repeat the offense, 
Jesse had involuntarily let slip her name again. 
Blythe, seated in his desk-chair with his hands on 
his knees, viewed Jesse calmly, but with eyes that 
showed cold glints of steel. 

“Are you going to get out now, or are you wait- 
ing for me to throw you out?” Blythe inquired 
of him in much the same tone that he would have 
employed in asking for a match. 

Jesse, it appeared, was not waiting to be thrown 
out. He went at once. But when he reached the 
street level and got into his waiting car, he was 
in almost as pretty a state of passion as any se- 
pulchral-voiced stage villain. And he was quite as 
resolved to win the baffling battle, even under the 
lash of unintermittent scorn, as he had been from 
the hour of his first meeting with Louise Tre- 
harne. 


266 


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An hour after Jesse had gone, leaving the 
stunned, shattered woman weltering in his litter of 
cowardly words, Judd walked into Antoinette Tre- 
harne’s apartments. He found her dishevelled 
and still weeping convulsively. He sat down and 
regarded her with the bewildered helplessness of 
the male when the woman’s tears are streaming. 
She scarcely saw him, but lay, huddled and shak- 
ing, a mere wraith of the woman whom he had 
beckoned to this present disaster and despair but 
a few years before. 

Judd, a gross, fleshly man not without human 
traits, felt sorry for her as he sat watching her. 
Also, he felt sorry for himself. It was not agree- 
able that a woman — this woman — should be weep- 
ing and moaning and shaking her shoulders in her 
grief in such a manner. It was disturbing. It dis- 
troyed the poise of things. It created a sort of 
sympathy which was bad for the digestion of the 
sympathizer. But Judd felt sorry for her. He 
really did. He had been watching, with a sort of 
mystified concern, how her health had been going 
to pieces lately. He wondered why that was. 
Surely, she had everything that she wanted? Well, 
then. Anyhow, Judd was sorry. He was ex- 
tremely fond of Tony. She had touched a certain 
responsive chord in him, and he knew that his 
chords were pretty well insulated; and here she 
was weeping and staining her face with tears, her 


THE EDDY 


267 


hair all mussed, and all that — Judd was decidedly 
disturbed, and sorry as well. 

“I say, Tony, what is it?” he asked her, after 
keeping vigil for fifteen minutes without emitting 
a word. 

There was no reply. She did not even look up 
at him. Gradually, though, her weeping ceased. 
Judd walked up and down the room, smoking an 
enormously long, black cigar, occasionally stop- 
ping in his heavy stride to look at her. Presently 
she sat up, blinking in the light, her face still 
swollen with her tears. A certain prettiness still 
remained to her; but it was the pathetic prettiness 
of the exotic the petals of which are dropping, 
dropping. 

“Is it anything that I can help, Tony?” asked 
Judd in a tone that was not lacking in kindliness, 
as he stopped and stood before her. She shook 
her head wearily. 

“No,” she answered him in a quiet, tear-hoars- 
ened tone. “It is nothing that you can help. It 
is all my own fault.” 

Judd flicked the long ash of his cigar to the 
rug and studied her with a puckered but not scowl- 
ing brow. 

“I don’t want to stir up or start anything anew,” 
he said, not unkindly, “but may I ask what it is 
that is your fault?” 

She crushed her wet handkerchief between her 


268 


THE EDDY 


palms and looked up at him with vague eyes. 

“Oh, everything,” she replied, with a shrug of 
utter weariness. “Few women could be found in 
all the world tonight, I believe, who have made 
such an utter mess of their lives as I have of mine. 
But I am not so unfair, thank God, as to blame 
it upon anybody but myself. It is a compensation, 
at any rate, to be able to see things in their true 
light.” 

“You are ill, aren’t you?” Judd asked her, with 
a solicitude that was obviously genuine. 

“I don’t know — I think so,” she replied. “I 
am very tired — I know that. Tired of myself, of 
everything.” 

“You need a change,” suggested Judd. “You 
ought to go away somewhere. But I don’t want 
you to go alone. I am pretty busy, but I’ll chuck 
everything to go with you if you want me to, 
Tony.” 

She looked at him with a sort of weary curios- 
ity. 

“It is just as I have said,” she murmured after 
having made this inspection of him. “It has never 
been your fault. You have, in your way, been 
kind to me. You still are. You care for me in 
your way. But it is a bad way, Fred. I know 
that now. It is too late, of course. Nevertheless, 
I am going to make what amendment I can. I 
must try to preserve at least a shred of woman- 


THE EDDY 


269 


hood. I am sure you are not going to take it 
angrily or bitterly. But we have reached the part- 
ing of the ways, my friend. You have been fair 
enough, from your point of view, through the 
whole wretched business. It has been my fault, 
my weakness, from the beginning.” 

Judd plumped into a deep chair near her and, 
pondering, blew great smoke-rings at the por- 
tieres. 

“The thing is,” he said, presently, “that you’ve 
lost your nerve. And, having lost it, why, you’ve 
gone into the camp of the folks you call the Smugs. 
Am I right?” 

“You are utterly wrong,” she replied, spiritless- 
ly. “I have little toleration for — well, death-bed 
repentances. That is too old and too unconvin- 
cing a story. A woman does as she likes, flouts 
the world, snaps her finger at usage, until she be- 
comes middle aged or near it; then she begins to 
fumble her beads, takes on the face of austerity, 
and condemns, right and left, the lapses of the 
younger generation of defiant women. I haven’t 
the least use for that sort of thing. It is simply 
that I have arrived at the knowledge that a woman 
is an idiot not to conform and to stay conformed. 
It is mere madness for a woman to suppose that 
she can fight so unequal a battle against the world’s 
opinion as I have foolishly tried to fight. It makes 
no difference as to a man. He can do as he pleas- 


270 


THE EDDY 


es. I suppose it was the inequality of that law 
that goaded me into it all in the first place. But 
I’ve lost. I see now that there never was the pos- 
sibility of any other outcome.” 

“You get a bit beyond me, you know,” said 
Judd, not argumentatively, but as one seeking en- 
lightenment. “I am willing to grant that men have 
the best of it, and all that sort of thing. But 
women know the rules of the game. Then why 
can’t they play the game without moaning and 
kicking to the umpire?” 

“There isn’t any umpire except conscience,” she 
answered him. “There isn’t any arbitration for a 
woman. She is what the steel-sheathed law of 
the ages says she is to be, or she is not. I have 
not been, and I have lost. That is all. I am not 
so futile as to complain of the game. I despise 
myself for having been so opaque as to suppose 
that I could defy the rules, win, and not be dis- 
qualified — as I have been, of course, ever since I 
tried it.” 

“It’s queer,” said Judd, reflectively, after a 
pause, “how these man-made laws sooner or later 
anchor all you women, after you’ve made your 
flights. The whole thing, you know, is an id- 
iotic system. They try to regulate us by rote and 
rule, by bell, book and candle. But, after all, they 
only think they’re regulating us that way, don’t 
they? I wonder how many of us really follow 


THE EDDY 


271 


their rules ? Mighty few that I know of. Openly, 
we subscribe to all of the iron-bound tenets, pri- 
vately we laugh at them and do the best we know 
to rip them apart. It’s all a matter of being 
found out; of being caught with the goods. A 
woman, of course, has to watch out for more dan- 
ger signals than a man. But they’re pretty clever 
little watchers, believe me.” 

“Well, you can’t blame them for that,” said 
Mrs. Treharne. “Most of them, at any rate, have 
the common sense not to attempt to brazen mat- 
ters out, as I have.” 

“I see what you mean,” said Judd, cogitatively. 
“Your idea is that it is a woman’s business to get 
all that she can out of life, and that the only way 
for her to get the most out of life is to pretend to 
agree to the rules as they’ve been made for her, 
and then, if she feels disposed to kick over the 
traces, why, to keep under cover about it. You’re 
right in that view, of course. But, after all, what 
difference does it make? Sooner or later, no mat- 
ter how we play the string, they toss us into a box 
and plant us. When it comes to that, I can’t see 
why you should permit what you call your con- 
science to make a wreck of you in this way. What 
have you done ? Why, you’ve been my companion. 
Will you be good enough to tell me how that com- 
panionship could possibly have been made any 
better than it has been if, at its outset, a man in 


272 


THE EDDY 


a surplice or a mouthing justice had mumbled a 
few so-called binding words over us? Faugh 1 
You can’t believe such crass humbug. The so- 
called ‘consecration of matrimony’ is a good 
enough phrase and a good enough scheme 
to keep groundlings up to the mark. Don’t 
you suppose we’d have fought and barked 
at each other just the same if we’d been married 
according to the frazzled old rule? At that, I’d 
have married you years ago, just to straighten 
you out, if there had been the least chance of my 
prevailing upon my wife, who made life a hell 
for me with her whinings, to get a divorce from 
me. But, now that the thing has ambled along 
to this stage, what’s the use of talking about quit- 
ting?” 

She listened to him composedly. But his words 
fell thumpingly enough upon her ears. He had 
never gone to the pains before of giving her so 
complete an elucidation of his doctrine. 

“There is as little use in our debating the 
world’s social and ethical system,” she said. “I 
am not thinking of myself. There is no reason 
why I shouldn’t acknowledge to you that I don’t 
much care how our relationship affects myself. 
But ” 

“Yes, I know what it’s all about,” put in Judd. 
“It’s your daughter. Well, I’ll have to grant that 
you’ve got a big end of the argument there. I’ve 


THE EDDY 


273 


got daughters of my own, and I know how I’d 
snort around if I thought there was a chance on 
earth for any of my daughters to inherit my doc- 
trine, my view of the world, the flesh and the 
devil. That’s the finest little inconsistency I pos- 
sess. I might as well stick in the observation here, 
while we’re all confessing our sins, that I’ve felt a 
good deal more like a blackguard than has been 
comfortable to my self-esteem ever since the night 
I rounded on your daughter. That, I think, was 
about the meanest and commonest act of my life. 
A pretty fine sort of a girl, your daughter.” 

“I didn’t think you had it in you to admit that, 
and I’m glad that you have admitted it,” replied 
Mrs. Treharne. “Of course your surmise is ex- 
actly right. It is on my daughter’s account that I 
have brought myself up with a round turn. It is 
pretty late in the day for me to do that, I know ; 
but one must do the best one can. We can talk 
as we please about our opinions of morals and 
ethics and the world’s harsh rules; but all of our 
talk vanishes into murky vapor when we begin to 
consider our children. The most contemptible act 
of my life, since you have so unexpectedly ac- 
knowledged yours, was in permitting my daughter 
to come here. You know that as well as I do — 
now.” 

Judd lit another cigar and smoked in silence for 
a time. 


274 


THE EDDY 


“The thing that gets me around the throat in 
connection with all this,” he said, presently, “is 
that it seems all to simmer down to the fact that 
you are thinking of quitting me.” 

“Don’t be absurd, Fred,” said Mrs. Treharne. 
“That consideration doesn’t disturb you a whit. 
You know very well that you will be glad to be 
rid of me.” 

“That,” said Judd, leaning toward her, his 
small eyes curiously alight, “is not true, and you 
know it.” 

“But,” she said, perhaps, with the unconquer- 
able desire of the woman for affection and admira- 
tion, curious to hear his reply, “I have lost my 
looks; I am a mere relic of what I was when I 
came to you; I am not far from forty. You know 
these things.” 

“Yes, I know them,” said Judd, and there was 
genuine feeling in the man’s tone. “But I know, 
too, that I care a damned sight more for you than 
I ever did for any other woman in all my life. I 
know that, if you really mean to go through with 
this plan of quitting me, it’s going to knock me 
sky-high. I can’t figure myself being without you. 
You have grown into my scheme of living. I don’t 
profess to much when it comes to morals and all 
that sort of thing; but I’ve got a heart built upon 
some kind of a pattern, I suppose; I must have, 
and you ought to know it, for you’ve possessed it 


THE EDDY 


275 


for years. And, that being the case — and it is the 
case — our relationship isn’t so bad as you might 
have been supposing it to be. Don’t you imagine 
that I am so infernally dried up as to what is called 
the affections. I know that my life won’t be worth 
much to me after you go out of it.” 

Mrs. Treharne, astonished and perhaps a little 
pleased at the earnestness of the man’s self-reve- 
lation, nevertheless shook her head wearily. 

“Yet you know very well, at this moment, that 
I must leave you,” she said broodingly. 

“Well, I’m going to be fair with you,” said 
Judd, the latent manhood, that had been buried 
under the callousness of years, showing in him. 
“I’m leaving that part of it up to you. I wouldn’t 
do that, either, if I didn’t care for you as I do. 
But you’ve got your end of it, and a big end. 
You’re entitled to do what you are prompted to 
do in consideration of your daughter. I’m not 
hound enough to try to block you in that. I’ll go 
further and say that you’re right about it. If I 
were in your place I’d do the same thing. The 
devil of it is that I care for you all the more when 
I see you moved to give your daughter the fair deal 
she’s entitled to. I hate to have you go. I don’t 
know what I’ll do with myself without you. But 
you’ve hit me right where I live in this business — 
the progeny end of it. The young ones have got 
to be thought of. And there is, I suppose, no way 


276 


THE EDDY 


whereby you could remain openly under my pro- 
tection and at the same time be doing the right 
thing by your daughter. Of course, if you cared 
to be more private about it, why ” 

“No, no — don’t even suggest that,” put in Mrs. 
Treharne. “That would be a pitiable evasion. 
You know that.” 

“Well, probably it would, but I’m putting all 
angles of the thing up to you,” said Judd, perhaps 
more in earnest that he had ever been in his life 
before. “One thing, though, you must leave to 
me. It’s only the fair thing that I should con- 
tinue to take care of you, no matter where you go.” 

“Not even that, Fred,” replied Mrs. Treharne, 
determinedly. “That, too, would be a dodging 
of the issue. I have a few thousands put by. 
They came from you, of course, but before I had 
made up my mind to — to live otherwise. I shall 
manage. Let me have my own way this final once, 
won’t you?” and she smiled wanly. 

Judd rose and picked up his hat and coat. 

“Don’t take any leaps in the dark, Tony, that’s 
all,” he said. “Think the thing all over. Don’t 
give yourself the worst of it. You know that / 
won’t give you the worst of it. I never have, have 
I? Maybe you’ll change your mind about it all. 
I’ll be back tomorrow night and see. Good- 
night.” 

There were tears standing in the eyes of the 


THE EDDY 


277 


huge-girthed man as he went heavily out of the 
room, and his shoulders were hunched forward 
as if he had suddenly passed from elderliness to 
old age. 

Mrs. Treharne, for almost an hour after Judd 
had gone, sat, chin in palm, gazing into vacancy. 
Then she rose, heavily enough for a woman so 
fragile as she now had become, gazed for a mo- 
ment in the glass at her haggard features, and 
shook her head, smiling bitterly. 

“ ‘Facilis descensus / and the rest of it,” she 
murmured. “That, I suppose, is the truest of the 
maxims; it stands the wear of time better than 
any of the rest of them. Well, I have the mourn- 
ful satisfaction of knowing that I have sufficient 
intelligence, at any rate, not to blame anybody but 
myself.” 

Then she rang for her maid. 

“Pack in the morning, Heloise,” she said when 
the maid appeared. “Begin early. Get one of the 
housemaids to help you. Pack everything — all 
of your own things, too. We shall be leaving be- 
fore noon.” 

“Everything, madame?” inquired Heloise, her 
eyes widening, “Winter costumes — everything?” 

“Everything,” repeated Mrs. Treharne. “I 
am not to return here.” 

Heloise nodded with a sage acquiescence, and 
began to take down her mistress’s hair. 


278 


THE EDDY 


“Where do we go tomorrow, madame?” 
Heloise asked when she had finished her task and 
Mrs. Treharne was in readiness for retiring. 

“I haven’t the least idea, Heloise,” replied Mrs. 
Treharne, gesturing her unconcern. “I shall 
decide between now and morning. To the moun- 
tains, I suppose — the Adirondacks, probably. I 
am not very well — New York stifles me. The 
mountains, I think it shall be, Heloise.” 

“Madame feels badly?” inquired Heloise, so- 
licitously. “One has noticed that madame is dis- 
traite, grows thin, looks unlike herself.” 

“Sometimes I wish I were anybody but myself, 
Heloise,” said Mrs. Treharne, enigmatically 
enough, considering her audience. “Goodnight.” 

After the maid had gone Mrs. Treharne went 
to her desk and wrote to Louise, telling her that 
she was leaving the house on the Drive, not to 
return. It was a long, self-reproachful letter, 
threaded with the wistful but not outrightly ex- 
pressed hope that the step she was taking would 
atone, if only in a slight degree, for the “wretched 
sin,” as she called it, of having permitted her 
daughter to set foot within the Riverside Drive 
establishment. She did not mention Langdon 
Jesse’s name. She felt a singular uneasiness over 
the thought that Jesse’s approaching visit to Lon- 
don in some way involved the weaving of a net 
about her daughter; but she dismissed that 


THE EDDY 


279 


thought, as often as it recurred, when she con- 
sidered Louise’s poise and her protection by 
Laura Stedham, an experienced woman of the 
world. Moreover, Mrs. Treharne would have 
found it difficult, unless there were some grave ac- 
tual peril, to mention Jesse’s name in a letter to her 
daughter; for it brought the blood to her face to 
remember how unconcernedly she had permitted 
Louise to meet the man — how she had even chided 
her daughter for not having accepted Jesse’s atten- 
tions in a more pliant, not to say grateful, spirit. 

“I am leaving with Heloise tomorrow, dear, 
but I have not decided where to go,” she conclu- 
ded. ‘‘I shall write or cable you an address before 
long. I am entirely well, though I believe I need 
rest and change. Have out your good time — I 
know that you are in good hands with Laura, to 
whom my love. I am looking forward to our new, 
happy life when you return to me.” 

Then she penned a little note to be left behind 
for Judd. 

“Don’t think me unkind for going without see- 
ing you again,” she wrote. “We have gone over 
it all, and we are both of the same opinion as to 
the need for the step I am taking. I cannot quite 
tell you how you have advanced in my opinion for 
some of the things you said tonight. You have 
been very fair, and I am correspondingly grateful. 
I will not be so banal as to suggest that, if there 


280 


THE EDDY 


be any chance for a reconciliation, or at least a 
decent armistice, between you and your wife, it 
might be at least a solution of a sort, considering 
your children ; I only wish that I could suggest that 
outright without incurring the suspicion that, hav- 
ing made a belated repentance myself, I am seek- 
ing to reform the world. One thing, however, I 
shall say outright : If I had it all to do over again, 
I should conform . There is no other way for a 
woman. We seek to ridicule the promptings of 
conscience by calling conscience an abnormality, 
a thing installed in us to whip us into line with 
age-old system. But it won’t do. It is, after all, 
the true voice. I wish I had never closed my ears 
to its urgings. 

“Time heals all. You will find yourself think- 
ing less and less often of me as the days drift by. 
That is as it should be. I am sorry for the hurt 
— I did not know until you spoke as you did to- 
night that it would be a hurt — I am inflicting upon 
you in thus effacing myself, at such short notice, 
from your life. But Time heals. Goodbye, and 
all best wishes.” 

Before noon, on the following day, Mrs. Tre- 
harne and Heloise left the house on the Drive, 
leaving no word behind as to whither they were 
bound. 


CHAPTER XIII 


L ANGDON JESSE maintained a bachelor 
apartment in London the year round. 
When he arrived there, about a fortnight 
after his turbulent scene with Mrs. Treharne and 
his signally unsuccessful attempt at an entente with 
Blythe, he found everything in order, quite as he 
had left it the year before. Gaskins, factotum and 
general overseer of the bachelor apartments, of 
which there were three tiers, Jesse’s being the sec- 
ond, was a little more bald and fat, but he still 
rubbed his hands as a mark of subservience and 
cocked his head to one side in a bird-like way while 
engaged in conversation with his supposititious 
superior. He had a respectful but earnest com- 
plaint to make of one of Jesse’s New York cronies, 
a man engaged in the somewhat tempestuous task 
of drinking himself to death, who had occupied 
Jesse’s apartment for a month during the spring; 
for it was Jesse’s habit to extend the use of his 
London lodging, which was desirable mainly on 
account of its highly privileged character, to those 
of his intimates who happened to be in London 
while he himself was in New York. 


282 


THE EDDY 


“ ’E was more than ’arf-seas hover hall the 
time, sir,” Gaskins told Jesse, lamentingly, “which 
of course was ’is privilege, but ’e did give ’isself 
some ’orrid bumps when ’e come ’ome along o’ 
three or four o’ mornings. Hi’m afraid ’e would 
’ave killed ’iself, sir, falling hagainst the furniture, 
’ad I not been living on the premises hand come 
hup hand got ’im straightened hout hin bed. Hand, 
sir, when Hi didn’t come hup, ’e would halways go 
to sleep in the bath-tub with ’is clothes on. A 
swift goer, sir, but killing ’isself; killing ’isself 
fast.” 

Jesse laughed. He was tolerant enough of the 
idiosyncrasies of his intimates, and this one, the 
“swift goer,” had been of use to him in New York 
as a sort of organizer and major domo of 
revelries. 

Jesse’s apartment was on one of the quiet 
squares of Curzon Street, set amid a row of other 
houses given over to the accommodation of sta- 
tionary and transient bachelors who found the 
restraints of London hotels irksome. It was beau- 
tifully appointed, even to the culinary department 
which Jesse himself only used on the occasions 
when he entertained companies of roystering 
Americans and their companions, who were usually 
more or less photographed figurantes from the 
musical comedies. His breakfast was brought to 
him from the Gaskins menage in the basement, and 


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283 


he dined here, there and everywhere — not infre- 
quently at the Savoy. 

It had not taken Jesse long, following his arrl 
val in London, to ascertain that Louise and Laura 
were at the Savoy. He had, in fact, within an 
hour after his arrival, caused a telephone canvass 
to be made of the London hotels mainly patron- 
ized by Americans during the touring season to 
gain this information. Now, lounging about his 
apartment while his Japanese man unpacked his 
things, he began upon the devising of a method 
whereby he might again meet Louise. He had been 
reluctantly forced to abandon the idea that by this 
time she might have “altered her prejudice” 
against him and might therefore be at least pas- 
sively willing to meet him upon the plane of ordi- 
nary acquaintanceship, thus giving him an opportu- 
nity to exercise his fascinations upon her. 

But he had not the least intention of abandoning 
his besiegement of Louise Treharne — even if the 
besiegement had to be turned into an ambuscade. 
He had come to London, leaving New York at a 
time when the market was setting strongly against 
him, solely with this purpose in his mind. He fur- 
nished himself with plenty of excuses for the 
deliberation with which he undertook this particu- 
lar quest. It was his indurated habit to doubt the 
continence of all women; and he made no excep- 
tion of Louise Treharne. The fact that she had 


284 


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scarcely been out of school a month when he had 
first met her did not in the least serve to give her 
immunity from such a doubt in Jesse’s mind. His 
single guide in such appraisals of women was his 
own experience with them, and his experience, he 
told himself, embodied plenty of parallels to the 
case of Louise Treharne. Why should she be im- 
mune from a furtiveness, and the indulgences 
thereof, which he had so often studied at first 
hand? Why should she be less clever at dissimula- 
tion than many others he had known? 

He had not the least doubt that he was right in 
this view. He sought to make himself believe that 
otherwise he would be entirely willing to permit 
Louise to go her way. But, being right, then it 
was intolerable that she should have flouted him — 
him ! — as she had. It was a girlish, immature pre- 
judice. He had not had sufficient opportunity to 
gain her better will. Her treatment of him had 
sorely touched his vanity as a moulder of women 
to his purposes. The circumstances of his meet- 
ing with her had deprived him of a fair chance. 
She was young, beautiful, and, he felt sure, su- 
perbly secretive. He had not the least intention 
of supinely yielding to her foolish belief — it could 
not be other than that — that she disliked him. 

But how to proceed? 

No problem, having to do with what he would 
have called his diversions, had ever before so 


THE EDDY 


285 


daunted him. Laura, to begin with, was a stum- 
bling block in his path. Laura, with whom he had 
a perfunctory acquaintanceship extending over 
several years, had pointedly cut him, not once, 
but frequently, since the newspapers had flared 
with accounts of the one disreputable affair con- 
cerning him which had leaked out. He knew very 
well that there was not the least possible chance 
for him to regain even a nodding plane with 
Laura Stedham. And she was the barrier be- 
tween himself and Louise Treharne. They were 
rarely, he felt sure, out of each other’s company. 
If Laura were out of the way, and he could reach 
Louise alone, there would, he felt, be a chance. It 
was unimaginable that Louise would, in such a 
case, be unresponsive to the allurements of his 
wealth, his power proceeding from wealth, his 
personality — Jesse felt so absolutely certain of this 
that he smiled when a vague doubt of it passed 
through his mind. 

He had won many aloof women by bestowing 
upon them magnificent gifts. But he knew per- 
fectly well that this method would not do with 
Louise Treharne. Whatever else she might be, 
there was, he felt, not a particle of greed in her. 
There had even been times when Jesse had not 
scrupled to effect his designs by putting forth the 
pretence that his devotions tended in but one direc- 
tion — the altar. How to employ even this final 


286 


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method to engage the attention of a woman 
whose eyes, he very well knew, would flame with 
scorn of him even if she found herself accidentally 
in his presence? 

For several hours, while Mutsu, his Japanese 
valet, went forward with the unpacking, Jesse 
strode up and down his apartment, going over this 
problem as he would have calculated the chances 
and mischances of a market campaign. 

It was inevitable that Jesse, at the end of his 
study of the problem, should have reached but one 
conclusion : it must be an ambuscade. 

Having reached this conclusion, he measured 
the risk and sought to forecast the aftermath. 
Everything was in his favor. In the situation 
which he meditated bringing about, he knew that, 
in case anything went wrong, the man’s word 
would be worth that of a thousand women, no 
matter how exalted their reputations. And more 
than likely, he calmly figured, there would be no 
aftermath at all. Entrapped, and perceiving no 
possibility of escape Louise would acknowledge 
her finely-acted furtiveness to him, and, like all 
women who used furtiveness as a screen, would 
make the best of the situation — which was all that 
Jesse desired. 

The salient feature of the plan which rapidly 
took form in his mind consisted in discovering 
when Louise and Laura should be out of each 


THE EDDY 


287 


other’s company, even for a short time. Jesse, 
not in the least balking at the idea of setting a 
deliberate trap because he knew that he would 
hold the advantage no matter what the outcome, 
applied himself to the solution of this by no means 
minor difficulty. The sight of the silent, busy 
Mutsu, industriously stowing his master’s gear in 
dressers and closets, furnished Jesse with a sug- 
gestion. 

He would give his Japanese man a vigil at the 
Savoy. The vigil might be a tedious as it was 
sure to be a delicate one, but Mutsu was both 
patient and discreet. He was a studious but alert 
man-boy of indeterminate age, as is characteristic 
of Japanese males under fifty, who had been em- 
ployed as a club attendant in New York for sev- 
eral years and thus had added to his natural gift 
for discretion. He had been with Jesse for more 
than a year, always doing more than was ever 
asked of him, but studiously refraining from indi- 
cating whether he entertained any personal liking 
for his employer — which is another trait of a cer- 
tain type of Japanese in their relationships with 
Occidentals. 

Jesse spent a concentrated half hour in minutely 
instructing Mutsu as to what he desired of him. 
The valet was to go to the Savoy on the morrow, 
and, by liberally tipping the doorman at the ladies’ 
entrance, or the carriage-opener, or whomsoever 


288 


THE EDDY 


among the hotel’s menials he found the most plia- 
ble or knowing, have Mrs. Laura Stedham and 
Miss Louise Treharne, American ladies who were 
guests of the hotel, pointed out to him when they 
should make their appearance, as they no doubt 
would in the course of the day, either for driving 
or walking. Miss Treharne would be the younger 
of the two. After having familiarized himself 
with the personal exteriors of these ladies, Mutsu 
was to keep vigil, on whatever pretext he might 
invent, in or around the hotel, until such a time 
as he should see the older of the two American 
ladies leaving the hotel alone. Whenever that 
should happen, the valet was instantly to tele- 
phone to Jesse at the Curzon Street apartment. 
The watch on the movements of the two ladies 
was not to terminate until Mrs. Stedham should 
leave the hotel unaccompanied by Miss Treharne, 
no matter how many days of waiting should be 
required before such a thing occurred. 

Mutsu nodded and exhibited his dental smile 
when Jesse had finished his instructions. He un- 
derstood the instructions perfectly, without, of 
course, in the least guessing at the purpose back 
of them. 

Jesse made no mistake in appraising his Japan- 
ese man’s acuteness at such work. Within less 
than two hours after ingratiating himself, by the 
use of unostentatiously distributed backsheesh, 


THE EDDY 


289 


with certain of the Savoy’s flunkeys, Matsu had 
had Laura and Louise pointed out to him as they 
left the hotel and entered a taxicab. He fixed 
their faces on his mental recording tablets, and 
called up Jesse on the telephone and told him of 
his progress. 

Thenceforward, for several days, the wiry little 
Japanese valet hovered about the ladies’ entrance 
of the Savoy, forestalling suspicion as to the pur- 
pose of his loitering by the bestowal of liberal 
pourboires upon such of the flunkeys as were in a 
position to notice the constancy of his vigil. 

Jesse kept to his Curzon Street apartment dur- 
ing the day, ever on the alert for a telephone mes- 
sage from his valet. He chafed under the neces- 
sity — as he deemed it — which kept him indoors 
throughout the daylight hours and only permitted 
of his prowling about London at night. But he 
possessed a sort of Luciferian determination in 
the pursuit of such a purpose as that upon which 
he was now engaged; to the successful accomplish- 
ment of which he would have passed his days in a 
cellar if that had been one of the requirements of 
the game. 

Laura had many friends, English and Amer- 
ican, in London whom she received and called 
upon informally. She cared nothing for the 
“functioning” of the Anglo-American social sea- 


290 


THE EDDY 


son in London, but she keenly enjoyed the uncere- 
monious gayeties of little groups of friends. She 
laughingly declared that she had “trained” the 
people she liked to “drop in” upon her in London 
in the American manner of neighborliness; and 
she enjoyed “showing off,” as she expressed it, 
“the beautiful Miss Treharne, from the States,” 
as some of the chatty London weeklies had allud- 
ed to Louise. She liked to junket about, too, with 
Louise; and there was no lack of agreeable men 
keen to take them on day-long motor tours through 
the country, attach them for merry afternoons to 
houseboat parties, and so on. For her part, 
Louise enjoyed the contrast afforded by the shy 
diffidence of the young Englishmen whom she 
met to the exuberant breeziness of Laura’s Amer- 
ican men friends in London. 

One afternoon — it was ten days after Jesse’s 
arrival in London — Laura suggested to Louise, at 
luncheon, that, as they had a “clean slate” for the 
remainder of the daylight hours for the first time 
in a long while, a tour among the shops, including 
a visit to the American department store just then 
established in London, might fill in a part of the 
time agreeably. 

“But I am not insisting upon your going with 
me, dear,” said Laura. “I know your lack of 
keenness for shopping in London, and I don’t 
blame you, considering how the tradespeople here 


THE EDDY 


291 


try to positively make one buy things one doesn’t 
want. So you can very easily escape on the plea 
that you have letters to write, or that you are tired 
and want to rest up for the theatre tonight, and I 
shan’t be in the least miffed.” 

“I’ll make it the letter-writing plea, then, 
Laura,” said Louise, “and cling to the truth in 
spite of the temptation you offer me to fib. I 
really have a lot of letters to write.” 

Laura went away in a taxicab directly after 
luncheon, saying that she would not be gone more 
than three hours, and Louise, at the desk in the 
sitting room of their suite, began a letter to her 
father, from whom, forwarded by John Blythe, 
she had lately received a long and affectionate 
letter, expressing his anxiety to see her and the 
hope that he might so arrange his business affairs 
as to permit of his visiting New York late in the 
Autumn. 

About half an hour after she had begun writing 
the telephone bell rang. 

“His this Miss Tre’arne?” Louise heard a 
man’s voice, “but Mrs. Stedham says that you are 
that of an upper servant, in the telephone. 

“Yes, I am Miss Treharne — what is it?” she 
replied. 

“Begging pardon, Miss Tre’arne,” went on the 
man’s voice, “but Mrs. Stedham says that you are 
not to be halarmed. Mrs. Stedham, Miss, was 


292 


THE EDDY 


taken slightly ill in a taxicab — nothing serious, 
Miss, she hasks me to hassure you — and she is 
now with Mrs. ’Ammond, at Number Naught- 
Fourteen Curzon Street. Mrs. Stedham, Miss, 
hinsists that you be not halarmed, and wishes you 
to come to ’er at Mrs. ’Ammond’s at once. This 
is Mrs. ’Ammond’s butler that is speaking.” 

“Tell Mrs. Stedham, please, that I shall come 
at once,” said Louise, instantly aroused by the 
thought that something serious might have hap- 
pened to Laura. “What is the number and street 
again, please? And you are sure Mrs. Sted- 
ham has had no accident or is not seriously 
ill?” 

“It is Naught-Fourteen Curzon Street, Miss 
Tre’arne,” came the reply, “hand Mrs. Stedham 
’erself hasks that you be hassured that she is only 
slightly hindisposed.” 

“I shall be there immediately, please tell her,” 
said Louise, making a pencilled note of the ad- 
dress. 

Very uneasy, Louise put on her hat and long 
pongee coat with fluttering fingers. She felt that 
something serious must have happened to deflect 
Laura from a shopping tour to the home of a 
woman friend. She had not heard Laura allude 
to any woman friend in London named Mrs. 
Hammond, but that consideration did not linger 
more than an instant in her mind, for Laura no 


THE EDDY 


293 


doubt had many London friends of whom she had 
not chanced to speak. 

Within less than five minutes after receiving 
the telephoned summons, Louise was on her way 
in a taxicab to the address in Curzon Street. She 
was pale and in a tremor of uneasiness when the 
taxicab pulled up at the curb of a neat three- 
story house near the end of a row of similar 
houses. 

So perturbed was she by the thought that she 
had not been told the entire truth as to what had 
happened to Laura that she scarcely noticed the 
bald, bland Gaskins when he opened the door for 
her and said “Miss Tre’arne?” 

“Yes, yes,” hastily replied Louise. “Where is 
Mrs. Stedham?” 

“If you please, Miss, Hi shall conduct you,” 
said Gaskins, inured by years of experience to the 
sort of deception he was practising; and he softly 
padded up the thickly-carpeted stairs in advance 
of her. Closely followed by Louise, who paid 
hardly any attention at all to the surroundings in 
her trepidation as to how she might find Laura, 
Gaskins quietly opened the front side door of the 
second floor apartment and held it open for her. 
Louise stepped into the room, and Gaskins, not 
entering himself, closed the door after her. She 
did not of course notice the click which denoted 
that the closed door was fitted with a spring lock. 


294 


THE EDDY 


Afterwards Louise remembered having thought 
it odd that Gaskins did not follow her into the 
room to announce her, instead of so suddenly 
effacing himself. 

Louise quickly saw that there was nobody in 
the charmingly arranged room — partly study, 
partly living room — in which she found herself. 
Also she noticed that it was distinctively a man’s 
room. Wondering, but not yet affected by any 
fear, she made a few steps toward the portieres 
at the rear of the room. 

She was about to reach out a hand to draw the 
portieres side, when they parted; and Langdon 
Jesse confronted her. He was trig in a big, over- 
weight way in his lounging suit of grey; but the 
pallor of excitement had overspread his naturally 
waxy face, and his attempt at the debonair 
manner was proclaimed to be a mere assumption 
by the trembling of his hands and the huskiness 
of his voice when he spoke. 

Louise had never swooned in her life. Now, 
however, at this apparition of the one human 
being she had ever learned to loathe, she pressed 
one hand to her forehead and another to her 
heart and swayed slightly. She feared that she 
would fall; but the thought rocketed through her 
mind that if she yielded to the almost overpower- 
ing physical weakness of the moment she would be 
at his mercy. By an effort of will which she 


THE EDDY 


295 


afterwards remembered with wonderment, she 
steadied herself as if by the process of actually 
forcing her blood to flow evenly. She permitted 
her hands to fall to her sides and regarded Jesse 
with an appearance of calmness. In that clash of 
eyes, Jesse, after a very few seconds of it, turned 
his head away on pretence of motioning Louise to 
a chair. The impalement of her gaze was beyond 
his endurance. 

Louise paid no attention to his arm-waved invi- 
tation to be seated, but stood in the spot where she 
had stopped when the first sight of him had almost 
sent her reeling. She regarded him steadily, al- 
most incredulously; an expression of incredulity 
that such a thing could be. 

“It is unpardonable, of course, Miss Treharne,” 
said Jesse, with a clearing of the throat in an at- 
tempt to sweep away his huskiness. “But my mad- 
ness to see you, the hopelessness of trying to see 
you, alone, in any other way — ” He brought his 
sentence to a finish with a gesture meant to em- 
phasize the excusableness of his position. 

“Therefore you have sought to entrap me?” 
said Louise, with no trace of scorn in her tone; 
her contempt for him was quite beyond such a 
manifestation of loathing; she asked the ques- 
tion as if really astonished to discover that a man 
would do such a thing. 

“What other method could I employ save a 


296 


THE EDDY 


sort of strategy?” asked Jesse, evading her gaze. 
“Knowing that I was under the ban of your un- 
reasonable dislike, that you would refuse to re- 
ceive me, and wretched, despairing, under the con- 
stant castigation of your prejudice — what else 
could I do? What else could any man do who 
found himself in a state of desperation from his 
love for a woman?” # 

“Say anything but that, I beg of you,” replied 
Louise, experiencing a surge of disgust at the 
man’s effrontery in professing love in such a situa- 
tion. “I have no reason to expect anything savor- 
ing of manliness from you, of course; but you 
might at least spare yourself the humiliation — if 
you can be humiliated — of seeming ridiculous.” 

“I expected harsh words from you, which, of 
course, is tantamount to confessing that I deserve 
them,” said Jesse. “But I think we shall have a 
better understanding. Won’t you be seated?” 

“I would have credited you for knowing better 
than to ask me that,” replied Louise. She stepped 
to the door by which she had entered, tried the 
knob, and of course found that the door was 
locked. Jesse, watching her, gradually resumed 
his attempt at the debonair manner. All of the 
odds were in his favor in this adventure. He 
could not see where he stood a chance to lose. 
Therefore, according to the smooth argument of 
cowardice, there was no reason, he considered, 


THE EDDY 


297 


why he should continue his air of deference. 

“You did not suppose that, having been to 
somewhat adroit pains to get you here, I would 
make it so easy for you to walk out without, at 
least, a little interchange of ideas?” he asked her, 
with coolly lifting brows, when she turned from 
the door. 

She noticed his change of tone, and was con- 
scious that she preferred it to his manner of fawn- 
ing self-exculpation. 

“Make your mind easy as to that. I have told 
you that I expect nothing whatever of you that 
befits a man,” she replied with a coldness of tone 
from which he inwardly recoiled far more than 
if she had poured out upon him an emotional tor- 
rent of rebuke. 

For a moment Jesse, studying her, was visited 
by the suggestion that perhaps, after all, Louise 
Treharne was wearing no mask; that she was 
really that anomaly — as he would have viewed 
such a one — a woman who was what she pro- 
fessed to be. But he quickly dismissed this 
prompting as something out of the question. She 
was merely a proficient in the art of acting, and 
she was employing her mimetic talent to the ut- 
most upon him — thus he argued it out with him- 
self. Moreover, he decided to give expression 
to his belief, as being calculated sooner to bring 
her to the realization that he had her measured. 


298 


THE EDDY 


“Listen, Louise,” he said to her, thus calling 
her without even attempting to make his tone 
apologetic; he leaned his elbows on the back of 
a leather chair and forced himself to look directly 
at her as he spoke : “It is idle for you to seek to 
delude me. It might do if I were not nearly twice 
your age and had not had about five thousand 
times your experience. As the matter stands, it is 
simply absurd. At least give me credit for having 
cut my wisdom teeth as to women. You portray 
the part you assume with me very well. I’ll have 
to say that for you. But, seeing that I have pene- 
trated to the heart of the comedy, why protract 
the play?” 

Louise disdained to attempt to have him believe 
that she did not understand him. But she was so 
riven by the shamefulness of his imputation that 
she could not have found words to reply to him if 
she had wanted to. 

“Why not give me a chance to make good with 
you, Louise?” went on Jesse in a tone of arguing 
familiarity, coming from behind the leather chair 
and advancing toward her. He accepted her 
silence for wavering, or at least a willingness to 
listen to the sort of a presentation he had started. 
“You know that I am devilishly fond of you, else 
I would not have gone to all this trouble to get 
you here. Of course you may call it a trap and all 
that sort of penny-dreadful rot; but what other 


THE EDDY 


299 


way had I to see you? You’ve scarcely been out 
of my mind since first I met you at Judd’s — I 
should say, at your mother’s house. I’ve been 
stark raving about you — am yet; and that’s the 
truth. Why can’t we be bully good friends? 
Your little pretenses are all very engaging and 
that sort of thing, and do you credit, of course, 
but you see I have penetrated them. Well, then, 
why can’t we hit it off? You don’t know how 
good I’ll be to you if you look at the thing in 
the sensible way. The first time I saw you I 
heard them hail you as Empress Louise. Well, 
I’ll see to it that you have the adornment and the 
investiture of an Empress. Well, is it a bargain, 
Louise? Will you shake hands on it?” 

He was very close to where she stood by this 
time, having continued to advance toward her as 
he spoke. A sudden flush had appeared on his 
features, and his enunciation was choppy, muffled, 
indistinct from the huskiness of passion. 

“Don’t come any closer to me than you are,” 
she said to him when, within an arm’s length of 
her, he stopped and held out his hand to bind 
the pact his words had attempted to frame. She 
spoke quietly, stood her ground, looked straight at 
him, and placed her hands behind her back. “And 
allow me to say this: I feel sure no coward of 
your kind ever yet escaped some sort of retribu- 
tion. You will repent what you have said to me. 


300 


THE EDDY 


But you will repent far more if you put your 
hands upon me. Will you open this door and let 
me go?” 

She looked her innocence, her perfect purity, as 
she stood before him. But Jesse was blind to 
what even the most ordinary, uncultivated man 
might have seen at a glance. His prominent, 
protrusive eyes had become bloodshot, and, in- 
stead of breathing, he was almost gasping. 

“So you’re going to keep on your white domino 
of pretense, eh?” he sneered. “Open the door? 
Do you think I’m going to let you treat me as if 
I were some credulous cub just turned loose from 
school? Open the door? Don’t, for Heaven’s 
name, take me for an imbecile!” 

Suddenly he reached forward and twined his 
arms about her waist and crushed her to him, mak- 
ing for her lips. She gave no outcry, but, raising 
her right forearm, pressed it under his chin, thus 
holding his head back and keeping his face from 
hers. But he did not relax his powerful embrace. 
Louise strove with all of her unusual woman’s 
strength to break his hold upon her, but his hands 
were clasped back of her, and her exertions only 
caused the two of them to sway and change 
ground; and his embrace remained that of a 
python. 

“You might as well drop this damned ground- 
and-lofty business and behave yourself like a sen- 


THE EDDY 


301 


sible girl, you know,” panted Jesse, speaking in a 
choked tone because her forearm remained 
wedged under his chin. “You’re game, and all 
that sort of thing, and you’re all kinds of a good 
actress, too; but, by God, you’re not quite clever 
enough to pull the wool over my eyes! You’re 
Antoinette Treharne’s daughter, and you’re some 
other things besides that I don’t exactly know the 
details of but have a pretty good guess at; and 
you’re going to rest quiet in these arms today, if 
you never do again !” 

They struggled back and forth, Louise, quite 
conscious that she stood in the greatest peril she 
was ever likely to know, holding her own with a 
strength which Jesse, even in the madness of the 
moment, told himself was almost preternatural in 
a young, slender woman. 

“You are simply wasting your strength, you 
know,” Jesse went on, putting forth all of the 
power of his arms and holding her so close to him 
that for a moment she could not move. “I have 
no taste for this sort of schoolboy and schoolgirl 
tugging and hauling. But you force me to it 
You haven’t a chance on earth of getting out of 
here, even if I release you — which I shall, as soon 
as I have taken a little harmless toll of your lips. 
Now, are you going to be sensible and quit this 
idiotic business?” 

Louise did not answer him. She had said no 


302 


THE EDDY 


word, made no plea, since he had seized upon her. 
She knew that words would be useless, and she 
could not have framed a beseeching phrase to ad- 
dress to him had she tried. She was taking her 
chance, doing all she could to make the chance 
better. But she could not and would not implore 
him to release her. She thought of screaming; 
but, remembering how the man who had conducted 
her upstairs had let her into the room and then 
obliterated himself, she reasoned it out, even in the 
intensity of the struuggle, that this man no doubt 
was a flunky accomplice who would pay no atten- 
tion to her screaming. Nevertheless she did de- 
cide that, as a last resort, she would scream, taking 
the chance that whomsoever happened to be on the 
floor beneath or the one above might come to her 
assistance. 

She had relaxed a little, for rest, as he spoke to 
her, and, catching her off her guard, Jesse sud- 
denly put forth all of his power and swung her, 
slipping and almost falling as he did so, partly 
through the portieres from which he had emerged 
when she came in. 

When the portieres thus were thrust apart, 
Louise saw, standing in the middle of the room 
which they screened off, a surprised-looking, some- 
what scowling little Japanese. Jesse caught sight 
of Mutsu at the same instant that Louise did. 

“What the devil are you doing here?” Jesse 


THE EDDY 


303 


demanded of the valet. “Get out and stay out till 
this evening, do you hear?” 

Mutsu first lowered his head, then shook it with 
a most decided negative. His lips were pulled 
back from his teeth ; mutiny shone all over him. 

“What you do?” he demanded of Jesse, falling 
into a pidgin vernacular which he rarely used ex- 
cept when excited. “She no like to be crushed in 
embrace? She is of an innocence. She is of an 
honorable. I saw that at Savoy Hotel when first 
I see her. Why you no let go?” 

“Get out of here, I say, you damned chattering 
monkey!” Jesse raged at him, relaxing his hold 
upon Louise, and leaping at the little Japanese. 

Mutsu, retreating not an inch, met the charge 
of his employer with lowered head, and when 
Jesse thrust out a hand to grab him the Japanese, 
revealing a perfect adeptness at jiu-jitsu which 
Jesse never had known he possessed, seized the 
thrust-out hand between both of his own sinewy 
ones; and in an instant Jesse’s face was drawn 
with pain. Then the Japanese made a sudden dart 
behind Jesse, pulling back the hand to which he 
still clung and the arm to which it was attached 
in such a way that the big, bulky man could not 
move without breaking the arm; he felt the ten- 
dons stretching to the breaking point as it was. 

“Now you go, Miss innocent honorable lady,” 
said Mutsu, without visible excitement, to Louise. 


304 


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“Go through next back room and out door there. 
I see you at Savoy tonight after I get fired-dis- 
missed from valet position here.” 

Jesse, his face red with the torture of the ac- 
complished jiu-jitsuing he was receiving, stormed 
at and cursed the Japanese in fo’c’sle terms as he 
saw Louise pass toward the rear door the Japa- 
nese had indicated. She nodded affirmatively to 
Mutsu when he told her that he would be at the 
Savoy that evening to see that she had arrived 
there safely; then she passed through the rear 
door leading into the hall, went down the thickly- 
padded stairs without awakening the bald and 
bland Gaskins, who dozed in a hall chair; and had 
the luck to hail a taxicab almost in front of the 
house. 

Laura was at the hotel, and in a panic of worri- 
ment about Louise, when the girl got back. Louise 
told Laura what had happened in a few words, 
then fainted, falling back heavily upon a couch, 
for the first time in her life — after the danger was 
all over, with the usual feminine whimsiness. 

That night the following cable message to John 
Blythe was flashed under the sea : 

“Come immediately. You are needed here. 

Laura.” 


CHAPTER XIV 


T HE mutiny of Mutsu, culminating at so op- 
portune a time for Louise, was the result 
of an enmity for his employer which had 
been slumbering for a long time in the mind of the 
Japanese valet. It had its origin in Jesse’s treat- 
ment of several women and girl victims for the 
entrapment of whom Jesse had invoked the un- 
willing services of his Japanese man. Mutsu had 
been employed as an attendant at New York 
clubs long enough to know the meaning of the 
word “thoroughbred” in its vernacular applica- 
tion to men; and he knew very well that the “thor- 
oughbred” man did not go in for the sort of wo- 
men-corraling machinations to which Jesse devoted 
more than half of his time. Thus formed and 
grew Mutsu’s contempt for his employer as a 
coward who preyed upon the defencelessness of 
inveigled women; and his contempt had reached 
a focal point when, after having been made the 
instrument to accomplish the enmeshment of 
Louise Treharne, he had returned to the Curzon 
Street house to find her in a peril with which he 
had become all too familiar since entering Jesse’s 
service. Louise’s beauty and palpable purity had 


306 


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touched a sympathetic chord in the Japanese; so 
that, after accomplishing his vigil, his knowledge, 
based upon experience, of the indignities and per- 
haps worse to which she was bound to be subjec- 
ted by his employer had impelled him, in a sudden 
surge of Oriental wrath, to follow her after he had 
seen her start for the Curzon Street house. 

Mutsu had no difficulty in making a leisurely 
departure from Jesse’s establishment and service 
after having released Louise from his employer’s 
toils. He retained his tendon-stretching jiu-jitsu 
hold on Jesse until he was sure that Louise had 
reached the street, while Jesse, literally foaming 
at the mouth in his rage, cursed him with an al- 
most Arabic variety and profusion of epithets. 
Then Mutsu, suddenly releasing his employer, 
darted to the center of the room and faced Jesse 
with a teeth-exhibiting smile that was also half 
a snarl. 

“Now I quit,” said Mutsu, briefly. “I am glad 
for a quit. I despise-hate your typical. You not 
come near me — ” as Jesse, rubbing his sorely- 
stretched arm, made a step toward him — “or I 
break your two-both arms. I pack. You pay me. 
I quit permanent-forever.” 

Jesse came to a full stop at the threat of being 
treated to a pair of broken arms. He was twice 
the size of the Japanese, but the difference in their 
sizes was more than compensated for by his own 


THE EDDY 


307 


cravenness and the valet’s mastery of the bone- 
breaking art. Mutsu, never taking his eyes off 
Jesse, got out his two suit-cases and packed them 
carefully and deliberately. Jesse, striding up and 
down and storming, seized a heavy jade ornament 
from a mantel, when Mutsu was about half 
through with his packing task, and drew it back 
as if to heave it at the valet; but Mutsu, making 
two agile backward steps, grabbed one of Jesse’s 
pistols which lay on top of the tray of an open 
trunk, and thus waited for the missile. Jesse re- 
placed the jade ornament on the mantel and re- 
sumed his striding up and down. When the Jap- 
anese had finished his packing, he consulted a lit- 
tle notebook and, totting up a column of ex- 
penditures, found that Jesse owed him fifteen 
pounds. 

“You pay now and permanent I quit,” the Jap- 
anese said to Jesse, and the latter threw his wallet 
on a table. 

“Take it out of that, you dirty little mandril,” 
he growled to Mutsu, “and be on your way before 
I have you handed over on the charge of being a 
thief.” 

“Just that you try,” replied Mutsu, breathing 
hard, as he counted over the money that was due 
him, “and I-you see where you get off — just that 
you try! Your name like fertilizer I would 
make!” 


308 


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Then Mutsu stuffed the amount that was due 
him into his pocket, tossing the rest of the money 
on to the table, clapped on his hat, picked up his 
pair of suit-cases, and walked out, flying the gon- 
falon of victory. He went straight to the Savoy, 
and was taken into the service of Laura Stedham 
the instant he made his appearance before her. 

Jesse, wearing a thoroughly whipped look, hud- 
dled in a deep chair for hours after Mutsu’s de- 
parture. The chair was close enough to his bran- 
dy bottle to enable him to apply himself to it at 
startlingly frequent intervals. The first “trans- 
action” of his life, having to do with women, had 
gone flatly against him. He ground his teeth as 
he drunkenly pondered that irrefutable fact. He 
had no fear of the consequences of his attempt to 
enmesh Louise Treharne. Her only male pro- 
tector, he knew, was on the other side of the sea. 
But it was the knowledge that he had utterly and 
finally lost out in the most diligent and ingenious 
attempt he had ever made upon a feminine cita- 
del that enraged him. He did not even have the 
satisfaction of framing reprisals. What reprisals 
could he attempt? And they could avail him noth- 
ing even if he succeeded in setting such revengeful 
machinery in motion. 

Jesse was considerably more than middling 
drunk when, his brandy having receded to the 
lees, he summoned the obsequious Gaskins. 


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309 


“Anybody above or below me here now?” he 
inquired of Gaskins. 

“No, sir,” replied Gaskins. “The gentleman 
that ’as the hapartment below is abroad, hand 
the gentleman that ’as the hapartment above only 
comes ’ere occasionally, sir, for a little hamuse- 
ment — ’e’s married now, sir.” 

“Well, that’s good,” said Jesse, reeling about. 
“That’ll let me have the whole damned outfit for 
my parties for the next ten days or so, eh?” 

“Hat your service, sir,” replied Gaskins, fa- 
miliar with Jesse’s prodigality in devising and set- 
tling for his diversions. 

“I’m going to have a series of rough-houses 
here,” said Jesse, minus even a crumb of dignity 
in the presence of a man who had been a flunky 
all his life, “to celebrate a defeat — or make me 
forget a defeat; it all comes to the same thing. 
Fellows have been defeated before my time, 
haven’t they? Yes, and they’ll be defeated after 
I’m dead, by hell ! You’ve got your work cut out 
for you, Gaskins ; I’m going to paint this sheltered 
little corner of London a luminous red for a week 
or so, and then damn your England ! I’ll have you 
fix up the suppers and that sort of thing. Engage 
all the help you want, and right away. And, say, 
get me another man, will you? I’ve fired that 
dirty little Japanese chimpanzee — he’s a thief.” 

“You may leave heverything to me, sir,” said 


310 


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Gaskins, rubbing his hands. “Hi quite under- 
stand, sir.” 

The saturnalia in the Curzon Street house be- 
gan that very night. Certain London stage man- 
agers of musical comedies still remember that 
week as one during which, for several nights run- 
ning, they had to present their extravaganzas with 
mere apologies for feminine choruses, and, in 
some instances, with many of the female princi- 
pals’ shrill understudies doing their dismal best 
with only half-learned lines and songs. 

John Blythe, making the Mauretania a quarter 
of an hour before that leviathan started on one 
of her East-bound record-breaking voyages, 
reached London on the sixth day after having re- 
ceived Laura’s cablegram. He surmised why he 
had been summoned. So sure was he that his 
surmise was correct that, when he walked in upon 
Laura and Louise at the Savoy, he did not even 
inquire why so urgent a summons had been sent to 
him. He preferred to postpone that question un- 
til he had an opportunity to be alone with 
Laura. 

Laura had told Louise that Blythe was coming. 
But neither of the women had been expecting him 
so soon. When he was announced by telephone 
from the hotel desk Louise flushed and paled alter- 
nately. Laura watched her amusedly. 


THE EDDY 


311 


“Such hardened unconcern is dreadful to see in 
one so young, Louise,” she was beginning to chaff 
when Blythe was ushered in by a diminutive But- 
tons. Louise gave him both of her hands. He 
held them, looking into her eyes with his wide 
smile. 

“May I?” he asked her, a little unsteadily. 

“As Louise’s chaperon, I shall never forgive 
her if she refuses — nor you, if you accept her re- 
fusal,” said Laura. 

Louise upraised her face to his. It was a sim- 
ple but eloquent confession that she knew her lips 
were for him. 

“Not as your guardian, I hope, Louise?” said 
Blythe, putting it in the form of a question. 

Her face still upraised and her eyes partly 
closed, she shook her head; and Blythe, drawing 
her to him, kissed her full on the lips. Then he 
quickly released her and took Laura’s outstretched 
hands. 

It was the luncheon hour, and Laura had lunch- 
eon served in the rooms. They chatted upon lit- 
tle intimate matters quite as if they had been lunch- 
ing in Laura’s New York apartment. Blythe, 
in fact, mentioned Laura’s apartment. 

“I met your decorator the other day,” he said, 
“and he wore a very puzzled expression. He told 
me that you had charged him by cable to do your 
place over in Tyrian purple, and he was afraid 


312 


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that color would be too dark, or too obtrusive, 
or something — I forget his exact words.” 

They knew, however, that his banter was 
simply a device. Both of the women, taking 
Blythe’s manner as their cue, and observing how 
pointedly he refrained from asking why he had 
been sent for, knew at once that he had formed his 
surmise. Louise, for her part, was awaiting 
Laura’s signal for her to withdraw. When she 
had gone, Blythe turned a suddenly-sobered face 
upon Laura. 

“It’s Jesse, I suppose?” he said to her. 

“Yes,” said Laura, and she told him of what 
had happened at the Curzon Street house. Also 
she told him of Jesse’s attempted advances upon 
Louise in New York. 

“I reprove myself now, of course, that I did 
not tell you at the time about how the man sought 
to force his attentions upon her in New York,” 
she said, “but you will understand, I know, why I 
hesitated to tell you. I felt that you would have 
found it too hard to keep your hands off of him, 
and I feared to put you to the test. Of course I 
should have known that you would do nothing, 
no matter how sorely tempted, that would have 
involved Louise ; but my timidity, I suppose, is of 
a piece with that of other women in such circum- 
stances.” 

“Don’t worry about that part of it, Laura,” 


THE EDDY 


313 


said Blythe, consolingly. “You’ve atoned, if any 
atonement were necessary, by getting me here now. 
After all, I could scarcely have taken it upon my- 
self to chastise him in New York. The blackguard 
did not go quite far enough there, as I understand 
it, to permit of me getting out on the firing line, 
even if I had known about it. It is just as well that 
you waited, for that 'and some other reasons. 
There is everything in having a good case,” and 
his face wreathed in a dry sort of a smile which 
Laura analyzed as boding little good for the man 
of whom they were speaking. 

“What are your plans, John?” Laura asked 
him presently. “London, you know, is quite as 
fruitful a field as New York for the achieving of 
an unmerited and distorted notoriety. I lean up- 
on your judgment, of course.” 

“You are not supposing that I am going to call 
the cur out, or tweak his nose in public, or any 
such yellow-covered thing as that, are you, 
Laura?” Blythe asked her with another of his re- 
flective smiles. 

“I know that you are going to punish him,” 
replied Laura. “I want you to punish him. 
Heaven knows that I am not bloodthirsty, but I 
should dearly love to be by while you are in the 
article of punishing him. Only it is an affair that 
must be handled with extreme caution. I promise 


314 


THE EDDY 


not to say that again. But, really, John, you 
must ” 

“The only thing I am afraid of,” interrupted 
Blythe, meditatively, “is that he might have left 
London. Where did you say his place is? I’ll 
have to devise some way to find out if he is still 
there.” 

“Mutsu can do that,” said Laura. She had 
told Blythe of the Japanese valet’s fine part in 
saving Louise from Jesse, and now she summoned 
him. Blythe, studying the wiry little man, who 
wore a distinctively agreeable smile when he made 
his appearance, commended him warmly for his 
conduct and asked him if he knew whether Jesse 
still remained at the Curzon Street house. Mut- 
su replied that he did not know but that he could 
find out; and he went to the telephone and called 
up Gaskins, representing himself to be a club 
servant who had been directed to ascertain if 
Mr. Jesse still remained in town. Gaskins re- 
plied that he was, and Mutsu gave that word to 
Blythe. 

“You go there, sir?” inquired Mutsu, evidently 
sensing that Blythe’s contemplated visit to the Cur- 
zon Street house was not to be in the nature of a 
peace errand. “Let it be that I shall go with you, 
sir? I can the help-assist you.” 

Blythe laughingly told the Japanese that he 
considered that he had done his share and that he 


THE EDDY 


315 


would not be needing any help-assistance; and 
Mutsu withdrew. 

“Shall we all dine together here?” Blythe asked 
Laura, rising after the Japanese had gone. “I 
am staying at the Carlton, and I want to run over 
there to ” 

“Listen, John: are you going to see that man 
at his place now, at once?” Laura asked him, with 
an expression of mingled worriment and curios- 
ity. “You know you are !” 

“Oh,” said Blythe, “I have a bit of running 
about to do, and ” 

“But listen, please: supposing the coward were 
to try to use some weapon on you and ” 

“Tush, Laura. What became of Louise? But 
stay: make my devoirs to her, won’t you, please? 
I am off to keep an appointment. We are dining 
here this evening then? You may expect me by 
eight o’clock,” and off he rushed. He had, in fact, 
been “straining at his leash,” as Laura thought, 
watching him, ever since he had found that Jesse 
still was in town. 

Louise came back a few moments after Blythe’s 
departure, and she looked rueful when she saw 
that he had gone. 

“Don’t take it so excessively to heart, dear,” 
Laura said to her. “He left all sorts of messages 
of apology for going without seeing you, but he 
had an appointment — er — I mean he had to go 
to ” Laura came to a somewhat feeble pause, 


316 


THE EDDY 


and Louise, moreover, had noticed that her tone 
was a bit forced. Louise, trembling slightly, 
placed her hands on Laura’s shoulders. 

“Dear, he has gone to Curzon Street, has he 
not?” she asked the older woman. 

“Of course he has! — why shouldn’t he?” re- 
plied Laura, with a bravado which immediately 
gave away to tears. Louise promptly followed 
her example. It was merely another repetition of 
the age-old story wherein women weep when men 
go forth. And, although they of course did not 
know it at the time, no doubt both women enjoyed 
their tears quite as heartily as if they had been 
justified in feeling the least fear for the safety of 
John Blythe. 

Jesse, his fiesta “in celebration of a defeat” at 
an end, was supervising the packing of his trunks 
by the young English valet obtained for him by 
Gaskins. His face was puffed and there were pur- 
plish pouches under his restless eyes. Three New 
York men, two of them somewhat youngish, the 
third of about Jesse’s age, who had been drawn 
into the current of the recent gayety at the Curzon 
Street house, lounged about, smoking rather dis- 
mally, glancing occasionally into the mantel glass 
at their furred tongues and shaking their heads 
in the spirit of self-accusation which comes with 
the aftermath. 

“Back to little old New York and at least a 


THE EDDY 


317 


year’s exemplary conduct for mine,” observed the 
eldest of Jesse’s three visitors, Jermyn Scammel, 
a stock broker widely known in New York for the 
catholicity of his views as to his associates. 

“The veil for me,” chorused the two younger 
men, sepulchrally. 

Jesse accepted their vows of amendment as 
tributes to his lavishness as an entertainer and 
smiled flaccidly. The self-gratulating smile still 
flickered on his face when there came a knock, 
and Gaskins, grown unceremonious during the re- 
cent gay proceedings, opened the door without 
waiting for a “Come in” and said: 

“Gentleman with an happointment with you, 
sir.” 

Blythe had told Gaskins that he had an appoint- 
ment with Jesse and that therefore there would 
be no need to announce him. 

Jesse’s smile congealed, his jaw fell, and he 
stood with mouth agape, when John Blythe 
stepped into the room. Blythe bestowed a mere 
nod upon him and then glanced around at the other 
men. He knew Scammel. 

“Hul-lo !” exclaimed that now repentent bon 
vivant, advancing upon Blythe with outstretched 
hand. “John Blythe it is, but too late for the do- 
ings! But who’d have thought you ever partici- 
pated in doings, old man!” 

Something in Blythe’s eye, as well as the panic- 
stricken appearance of Jesse, stopped Scammel’s 


318 


THE EDDY 


airy greeting when he had got that far. “Why, 

what the devil ” he muttered, looking first at 

Blythe and then at Jesse, whose face had taken on 
a sickly, chalky pallor. The two younger men, 
seated a-straddle of chairs, watched the scene 
with curious eyes. 

Blythe rather liked Scammel, in spite of the lat- 
ter’s excessively careless way of living. The man 
was genuine, at any rate, and Blythe was not dis- 
pleased to find him there; he knew that Scammel 
would be a trustworthy witness as to anything 
that might happen. Blythe bowed to the two 
younger men, and turned to the still agape 
Jesse. 

“Would you prefer to see me privately, or do 
you elect to have these gentlemen remain?” he 
asked Jesse in a quiet tone. 

“I have nothing to see you about,” spluttered 
Jesse, “and you are intruding upon ” 

“You know what I have crossed the Atlantic 
to see you about,” Blythe broke in upon him in 
an even tone. 

“This is no place for a clergyman’s son — I can 
see that!” ejaculated Scammel, picking up his hat 
and stick, the two younger men doing likewise; 
the fact having become very obvious by this time 
that something unusual between Blythe and Jesse 
was in the wind. 

“Don’t you people go!” gasped Jesse, and they 
all saw, not without a certain immediate disgust, 


THE EDDY 


319 


that the man was in positive terror. “I want all 
of you as witnesses! This man,” staring with 
protrusive eyes at Blythe, “has no appointment 
with me. He wasn’t asked to come here, and he 
has no right here. He is intruding upon my ” 

“Easy has it, Jesse,” put in Scammel, putting off 
his airiness of a sudden and assuming the dignity 
which belonged to him. “I know Blythe. He 
doesn’t intrude anywhere. This is a quarrel be- 
tween you two. I am your guest and I’ll stay if 
you want me to and if Blythe is agreeable. How 
about it, Blythe?” 

“I would a little prefer that you and these other 
gentlemen remain,” replied Blythe, quite at his 
ease. “I think it fair to tell you in advance, how- 
ever, that you are to witness the chastisement of 
your host.” 

Jesse gave an audible gasp, and Scammel looked 
at him and then at Blythe. 

“Well, since you both want us to stay, there is 
no other way for it, is there?” turning to the two 
younger men, who nodded acquiescently. “But 
it’s a bit unusual, isn’t it, Blythe? Coming to a 
man’s house with a chastising programme?” 

“You won’t think so, Scammel, nor will your 
friends here, when I explain the reason,” replied 
Blythe, no trace of excitement in his tone; “and, 
since you are going to remain, you are of course 
entitled to an explanation.” 

“It’s all a put-up job !” broke out Jesse, hoarse- 


320 


THE EDDY 


ly. “I’ve had no affair with this man. He’s med- 
dling, that’s what he is doing — meddling ! I swear 
it, by God!” 

“Just a moment, Jesse,” put in Scammel, square- 
ly facing the man he addressed. “Blythe doesn’t 
meddle. I know that as well as I know that I wear 
a hat. He wouldn’t be here with any such pur- 
pose as he announces unless he had some pretty 
good reason. Don’t try to prejudice his case in 
advance. That isn’t the square thing.” 

“But,” almost screamed Jesse, “he is picking 
up other people’s affairs and trying to make them 
his ” 

“Stop that, Jesse!” broke in Scammel, raising 
an authoritative arm, a trace of anger in his tone. 
“Good God, man, can’t you play the game? 
You’ve got a man’s gizzard, haven’t you? What 
the devil are you trembling and quaking about? 
Is your case so bad as all that? Go ahead, Blythe. 
It’s your say now, and we’re listening.” 

Jesse, knowing that the verdict of this court of 
arbitration could not but be against him, glanced 
at the portieres as if upon the point of bolting for 
it. Scammel, noticing this, passed behind Jesse 
and took his stand at the parting of the port- 
ieres. The two younger men rose from their 
straddled chairs and viewed the proceedings stand- 
ing, their eyes slitting perceptibly when they per- 
ceived Jesse’s manifest cravenness. 

“Gentlemen,” said Blythe, glancing from Scam- 


THE EDDY 


321 


mel to the younger men and not even seeming to 
see Jesse, “I don’t think it will be necessary to 
pledge you to secrecy as to what happens here, 
even if no names are to be mentioned. If the 
affair involved a man it would be different. But 
it does not. It involves a young New York ladyi, 
now in London, who has been out of school less 
than half a year. The young lady is my ward. 
Moreover, she is to be my wife.” 

“But I didn’t know that!” broke in Jesse with 
a hideous shrillness of tone. “I swear to God 
that I did not know that, or ” 

Scammel glared Jesse into silence, and Blythe 
went on. 

“It makes no difference, as you will discover, 
whether he knew it or not,” he said, speaking of 
Jesse as if he had not been present. “The thing 
that he did, in this place, a week ago, was a thing 
so incredibly base that my account of it might 
well tax your credulity. But that it happened pre- 
cisely as I am going to tell it to you is of course 
true, else I should not be here. The young New 
York lady of whom I speak is in London under 
the protection of a chaperon, a friend of her 
mother’s. A week ago, by means of a trick, this 
man enticed my ward, who is wholly lacking in ex- 
perience, to this house. He caused a telephone 
message to be sent to her at her hotel, informing 
her that her chaperon, who had left the hotel on 
a shopping tour, had been overtaken by an illness 


322 


THE EDDY 


and had been brought to this house. This house 
was represented in the telephone message to be the 
home of a ‘Mrs. Hammond,’ an imaginary friend 
of my ward’s chaperon. The young lady came 
here with all haste to see, as she supposed, her 
chaperon and protectress. This man, waiting for 
her, not only insulted her grossly, subjecting her 
to indignities and physical violence which I can 
scarcely speak of in the presence of gentlemen, 
but he told her, virtually in so many words, that 
it was his deliberate purpose to deflower her. His 
own valet, a Japanese, appeared in her moment of 
peril; and it was the valet’s physical intervention 
alone that saved her from the fate this man had 
ingeniously and malignantly planned for her.” 

Blythe paused. He had spoken quietly, but 
there was a menacing timbre in his voice. Jesse, 
looking like a hunted animal, had attempted 
several times to break in upon Blythe’s recital, but 
each time Scammel had stopped him with a warn- 
ing gesture. 

Now Scammel, with gathered brows, stepped 
in front of Jesse and inquired of him: 

“What have you to say to this, Jesse?” 

“I didn’t know, I tell you,” Jesse broke out in 
a voice that was choked with terror, “that she 
was to be married to Blythe, or ” 

“Wait!” commanded Scammel, thrusting up a 
staying hand. “That convicts you, Jesse. You’re 
a damned scoundrel on your own say-so. What 


THE EDDY 


323 


difference does it make as to the main facts of 
your dirty bit of work whether you knew that or 
not? I am not unmindful of the duties of a guest; 
but, for all that, if I were Blythe I’d whale the 
everlasting hell out of you, here and now, and I 
reckon he will; and I, for one, am going to stick 
around to see fair play!” 

“Same here” and “That goes for me, too,” 
put in the two younger men. 

Blythe stepped forward, and, drawing back his 
right arm, left the quickly-crimsoning imprint of 
his palm upon Jesse’s waxy cheek. Jesse received 
the blow, merely meant to be introductory, with a 
shriek, and wriggled back and sought to huddle 
in a corner of the room. 

“Why, damnation take it, Jesse,” exclaimed 
Scammel, reddening with the shame of seeing a 
man he had been on terms with performing so 
cravenly, “you’re going to put up your hands, 
aren’t you? You’re not going to be such a cur 

as to Here, none of that, you know!” and 

he leaped at Jesse and wrenched from his grasp 
the heavy teakwood tabouret which the man, at bay 
and with no sense of fairness, had suddenly 
reached down and grabbed from beneath the jar- 
diniere which it supported. 

“Keep out, Scammel, please,” quietly enjoined 
Blythe, and he stepped over to Jesse, pulled him 
to the center of the room by the lapel of his coat, 
and then brought his right fist crashing to the 


324 


THE EDDY 


point of Jesse’s jaw. Jesse, seeing the blow com- 
ing, squeaked like a rat; then he went down like 
a log and lay unconscious before the fireplace. 
Blythe and the three other men stood looking at 
him with wonderment mingled with disgust. 

“Well, by St. George and the Dragon, that gets 
me — a man weighing two hundred if he weighs an 
ounce, and well put together, too, even if he may 
be not exactly fit — a man like that standing up and 
letting another fellow bang away at him without 
ever so much as sticking up his hands — Damn 
such carrion in a man’s shape, I say ! I consider 
that you’ve been cheated, Blythe. I know that 
you’d a thousand times rather he had taken at 
least one healthy swing at you !” 

“I feel as if I had hit a woman,” replied Blythe, 
a lump of loathing in his throat. 

One of the younger men went to the head of the 
stairs and called to Gaskins to come up. Gaskins 
viewed the prone man imperturbably enough, then 
dashed a glass of water in his face. Presently 
Jesse’s eyelids fluttered and after a moment he 
sat up, rubbing his chin, and staring about con- 
fusedly. 

Then the four men left the house, Scammel 
and his two companions lashing out at themselves 
for having even unwittingly permitted themselves 
to become the guests of a man of such monolithic 
cowardice. Blythe, sickened by the spinelessness 
of the man whom he had called to account, went 



HE SQUEAKED LIKE A RATJ THEN HE WENT DOWN LIKE A LOG 


Page 324 , 




THE EDDY 


325 


to his rooms at the Carlton to dress for dinner at 
the Savoy. 

Louise and Laura, neither of them in a conver- 
sational humor, had just finished dressing when 
Blythe, ushered by the pompous three-foot But- 
tons, walked in upon them, very “tall and wide” 
in his evening clothes. As he came under the light 
of the electrolier both women surveyed his face 
keenly and nervously for marks of a conflict. 

“Of course he has been there,” thought Laura, 
“but ” 

Just then Blythe, in removing his right glove 
in rather a gingerly fashion, pulled with it a piece 
of white sticking plaster, and Laura perceived that 
the skin was missing from the middle knuckle of 
his right hand. Then she knew that he had “been 
there.” But she did not hear what had happened 
that afternoon at the Curzon Street house until 
Scammel, whom she had known all her life, told 
her several months later in New York; Scammel, 
while Blythe had been making his explanation, 
having correctly guessed, being acquainted with 
nearly all the Americans in London, as to the 
identity of the chaperon of Blythe’s ward. 


CHAPTER XV 


B EFORE Louise had risen on the following 
morning Laura entered her bedroom and 
handed her an unopened cablegram. 
Louise tore open the envelope with trembling 
hands. She had no means of surmising the char- 
acter of the message. Blythe had been purposely 
evasive in replying to Louise’s questions as to 
whether her mother had looked ill when he had 
last seen her, for he disliked to be the bearer of 
disquieting news. His private report to Laura, 
however, as to the obvious state of Mrs. Tre- 
harne’s health had been sufficiently alarming to 
cause Laura to lie awake a good part of the night, 
meditating as to whether she should tell Louise. 
Laura had read Mrs. Treharne’s letter to Louise, 
announcing her departure from the house on the 
Drive for an undetermined destination; and this 
complicated the situation and was the reason why 
Laura withheld from Louise what Blythe had told 
her about her mother’s gravely-declining health. 
Since the receipt of that letter no message had 
reached Louise from her mother, giving her ad- 
dress; and Laura had not elected to alarm the girl 


THE EDDY 


327 


needlessly while Mrs. Treharne’s address re- 
mained unknown. 

The cablegram took the problem out of Laura’s 
hands. It was dated from Saranac, in the Adiron- 
dacks, and read: 

“Am ill. Come immediately. Mother.” 

Louise handed the message to Laura and rose 
at once. She found it very natural that, at such 
a moment, she should lean upon the resourceful- 
ness of John Blythe. 

“I suppose John can arrange for our passage?” 
she said to Laura. 

“John,” replied Laura, confidently, “can do 
anything, I think, even to obtaining accommoda- 
tions on a New-York-bound steamer in July, which 
is next to impossible.” 

Laura immediately telephoned to Blythe at the 
Carlton, telling him of the summons Louise had 
received from her mother. 

“Of course I am to go with her,” said Laura, 
“and equally of course we shall have a dreadful 
time getting steamer accommodations at this 
season.” 

“Probably I can manage,” was Blythe’s prompt 
reply. “The Mauretania , which brought me over, 
is returning day after tomorrow. I know she is 
booked to the gun’ls — but I’ll see what can be 
done. Of course I am going, too. I’ll see you 
by noon and let you know.” 


328 


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Jermyn Scammel and his two companions who 
had been witnesses of Blythe’s meeting with Jesse 
at the Curzon Street house were staying at the 
Carlton, and Blythe knew that they had reserved 
accommodations on the Mauretania . Blythe 
found them at breakfast in Scammel’s rooms and 
he told them of the quandary in which two Ameri- 
can ladies found themselves owing to the extreme 
difficulty of securing passage on board West-bound 
steamers at that season. 

“Anybody I know, Blythe?” Scammel asked 
him. 

“I think so,” said Blythe. “Mrs. Laura Sted- 
ham is — ” 

“Laura Stedham? Known her all my life — tried 
my infernallest to marry her when I was a cub, but 
she wouldn’t so much as look at me,” said Scam- 
mel, cheerily. “She can have my cabin if I have to 
stay over here for the remainder of my natural 
life. How about you fellows?” addressing his 
companions. 

It was all one to them, it appeared. If Scammel 
was willing to remain in London for a while 
longer, why — 

“But I haven’t the least idea of remaining in 
London,” put in Scammel when they had got that 
far. “The night train for Paris for mine, now 
that I can’t get away on the Mauretania . No use 
talking, Blythe, fate is against me. I want to be 


THE EDDY 


329 


good, but I’m not allowed to be. I’ll leave it to 
you or anybody else if I had the slightest idea 
of making Paris this trip. I’ve been fighting the 
temptation to hit up Paris ever since I’ve been 
over this time. Now, you see, I’m positively 
driven to it. Man comes along and grabs my 
homeward-bound cabin away from me. What 
else is there for it but Paris? Are you cubs going 
along with me ?” turning to the two younger men. 

The “cubs,” it appeared, were quite willing to 
defer their meditated repentance until such time 
as Scammel might be ready to repent with them, 
and they proclaimed that Paris sounded good to 
them. Thus it was that Blythe was able to appear 
at the Savoy long before noon with the announce- 
ment that he had contrived to obtain three highly- 
desirable staterooms on the Mauretania. 

“What should we ever have done without him?” 
said Laura to Louise, while Blythe lounged about 
— making occasional discreet exits — during their 
packing operations. 

“Without Jerry Scammel and the two apt and 
obliging young New York pupils he is breaking in 
over here, you should say,” observed Blythe. 

“John! Was it dear old Jerry Scammel who 
did this for us?” asked Laura, blushing. “Well, 
I shall certainly bake him a cake or crochet him 
a pair of pulse-warmers or ear-laps or something 
as soon as he gets back to New York. He’s a 


330 


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dear, and always was, and I always fight tooth and 
nail for him when the catty old dowagers call him 
the most dissipated man in New York. Jerry, 
to this day, declares to me, every time I meet him, 
that he holds the world’s record for proposals to 
the same girl within a given time. I was the 
girl. I believe I was somewhat under sixteen and 
Jerry was not yet nineteen. He swears that he 
proposed to me forty-four times within one month. 
Of course he is wrong. It was only twenty-three.” 

Laura and Blythe purposely kept up this sort of 
small talk to divert Louise’s thoughts from her 
mother’s illness. Louise, heavy-hearted as she 
was, quite understood their kindly purpose, and 
successfully strove to appear entertained by their 
banter. But her foreboding was not easy to 
dispel. She knew that her mother would not have 
summoned her if her illness had not been of the 
gravest character; for in her last letter — the one 
she wrote on the night before leaving New York 
— she had insisted upon Louise having her Lon- 
don visit out. The girl had been filled with an 
intense happiness upon reading her mother’s an- 
nouncement of her departure from the house on 
the Drive. She had pictured a happy reunion with 
her mother and had begun immediately to make 
plans for the home which they should have to- 
gether upon her return to New York. So that 
her mother’s summons and Louise’s certainty that 


THE EDDY 


331 


the summons would never have been made had her 
mother’s condition not been very serious, bore 
heavily upon her. 

“I begin to fear that I have' found my mother 
only to lose her again,” she had said to Laura in 
talking over the cable message; and Laura, while 
professing to be shocked at Louise’s premonition, 
had turned away to hide her tears; for the same 
premonition, better-grounded than Louise’s on 
account of what she had heard from Blythe as to 
the visible decline into which Mrs. Treharne had 
seemed to be falling, was depressing Laura. 

The steamer made an unseasonably squally and 
heavy passage of it, and Laura, who had never 
been intended for a Vikingess, as she expressed it, 
kept to her stateroom almost throughout the 
voyage. Louise and Blythe were among the few 
on board the crowded steamer who did not shrink 
even once from mess call, which is the test of the 
born voyager. They kept pace with the most 
hardened constitutional-takers on deck every day, 
and were together almost constantly. 

Louise Treharne and John Blythe already knew 
that they loved each other. On board the steamer, 
and for five days running, rarely out of each oth- 
er’s company, both found that, humanly speaking, 
they also genuinely liked each other. Even men 
and women entirely devoted to each other quite 


332 


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commonly develop a certain pettishness often 
verging upon actual irascibility when they find 
themselves incessantly in each other’s company on 
board a steamer. Louise and Blythe, despite the 
unfriendliness of the elements and the consequent 
discomforts of the passage, both felt quite lost and 
miserable when they were separated from each 
other even for short periods during the voyage. 
Louise, in her inexperience, did not seek to analyze 
this phenomenon. But Blythe did. 

“She is as fine-grained as she is beautiful, 
Laura,” he said to that ever-receptive confidante, 
when he found himself alone with her for a mo- 
ment one day toward the end of the voyage. “I 
have, as of course you know, no particular amount 
of sweetness of disposition at sea or anywhere 
else. But, somehow, I have been a marvel of 
beatific mildness and contentment ever since we 
left England. There’s only one way to account 
for that. Louise is temperamentally perfect.” 

“Charming, but wholly wrong,” replied Laura. 
“Louise is magnificently deficient in the thing 
called ‘temperament’ — thank Heaven! Did you 
ever happen to encounter a female who delighted 
in calling herself a ‘woman of temperament,’ John 
Blythe ? Then you know how hopelessly impossi- 
ble a woman of that sort is, considered as a com- 
panion for any normal human being of either sex. 
If Louise had been temperamental — any kind of 


THE EDDY 


333 


temperamental — I am certain that you two would 
be passing each other on deck without even nod- 
ding by this time. But the dear is just a sweet 
girl-woman with a wholesome imagination and 
human impulses, and I myself, a woman (and a 
fussy one, too, sometimes!), could live with her 
forever without a symptom of friction. You are 
a very lucky rising young legal person. I don’t 
know what I shall do without her.” 

“Without her — when?” said Blythe, his sur- 
prise genuine. “You are going up to the Adiron- 
dacks with her, aren’t you?” 

“To be sure,” replied Laura. “I mean that I 
don’t know what I shall do without her when — ” 
She broke off in momentary confusion. “Oh, 
you are impossibly opaque today, John,” she 
finished, smiling illuminatingly. 

“Oh — that!” said Blythe, enlightened, yet a bit 
rueful. 

It was precisely “that” which, as the steamer 
drew near New York was causing Blythe no little 
disquietude. He knew that he would miss Louise 
acutely after the delightful intimacies of the voy- 
age. No word as to their tacit relationship had 
been spoken by Blythe since they had thus been 
thrown almost constantly together. A natural 
delicacy had deterred him from touching upon 
that subject at a time when Louise was hurrying 
to the bedside of her mother. But, now that the 


334 


THE EDDY 


steamer was less than half a day from New York, 
he began to draw a desolate picture of his lone- 
some state when he should bid goodbye to Louise 
at the station. Her vigil at her mother’s bedside 
might be a protracted one. He remembered, not 
without a shock of astonishment, that he had never 
asked Louise to be his wife. When he mentally 
retraced the path, he found it easy enough to 
understand why he had not put this question to 
her. Nevertheless, the fact that she was by no 
means plighted to him had caused him a vague 
uneasiness since the beginning of the voyage; and, 
now that their separation, for an indeterminate 
period, impended, he found himself swept by a 
desire to make their mutual understanding — if 
such, indeed, he thought nervously, Louise really 
took it to be — more explicit, if not more binding. 

It chanced that Louise herself furnished him 
his opportunity to speak. She had written a wire- 
less message of greeting to her mother, to be 
transmitted from New York to Saranac, and they 
watched the operator as he flared the message 
over the waste of tumbling waters. 

“I told her in the message that you are with 
us,” Louise said to him. “And of course she shall 
know, when I see her, that Laura and I might 
have had to remain in England indefinitely had it 
not been for you.” 

“There is something that I want your sanction 


THE EDDY 


335 


to tell your mother when I see her,” said 
Blythe as they set out for a stroll on the long 
deck. 

“Yes?” she said, with a quick sidewise glance 
at him. She understood perfectly well what he 
meant; had, indeed, been waiting for him to as- 
sume that direction; but women are not expected 
to make such admissions. 

“I think you will be ready to admit that I have 
striven to practise self-restraint,” said Blythe, with 
a smile in which there was a touch of nervous- 
ness. “But there is a point beyond which I cannot 
go. Are you to tell your mother that I have asked 
you to marry me, or am I to tell her when I see 
her?” 

“Have you asked me that?” inquired Louise, 
a little mischievously; but she asked the question in 
order to gain time. 

Blythe laughed in self-deprecation. 

“If I have been guilty of so stupid an omission, 
I can rectify it by asking you now?” he said; and 
Louise noticed the flush that overspread his fea- 
tures. “I have, I know, a habit of taking too 
much for granted. But I really supposed you 
knew that my life is bound up in yours, Louise.” 

“And mine in yours,” she replied with a perfect 
candor that thrilled him. “If I did not love you 
dearly — and I do — perhaps I should not so keenly 
feel that I would be doing you an injustice to 
marry you.” 


336 


THE EDDY 


Blythe could scarcely credit his ears. Her first 
words had set him to soaring, but, when she had 
finished, he was conscious of as stunned a feeling 
as if he had received a physical blow. Involunta- 
rily he stood stock still and faced her; but the need 
to keep moving in order not to block the progress 
of the other deck pedestrians quickly flashed 
upon him. When he moved forward again at her 
side, however, listening to her quiet, earnest words, 
he was conscious, for a while, of a certain numb- 
ness, almost approaching languor, which he found 
it difficult to throw off. * 

Louise, more reservedly but with no lack of 
clearness, touched upon the points which she had 
made in going over the same ground with Laura. 
Surprised as he was, Blythe, whose mind had never 
been visited by any of the considerations which 
she named, nevertheless had an immediate and 
acute understanding of the ordeal through which 
the girl must be passing in thus presenting her 
analysis of the situation to him. 

“It would be the logical thing for me to say 
that you have wholly misjudged me, Louise,” he 
said to her when she had finished. “But I am 
not going to do that, because I know that you have 
done nothing of the sort. You are simply the 
victim of a perfectly natural supersensitiveness. 
I know how difficult you have found it to say such 
things. I blame myself for having pressed you 
to the point where you considered it necessary to 


THE EDDY 


337 


say them. It is scarcely less hard for me to talk 
of such a matter — harder still because nothing that 
you have touched upon has even once occurred to 
me. I know that you are the woman my heart 
craves for. Nothing that you have said, or ever 
can say, will change that. And if you care for 
me — 

“I do,” Louise interrupted him. “You are 
never out of my thoughts. I find it hard to be- 
lieve that there ever was a time when I did not 
know you and love you.” 

The beautiful spontaneity and frankness of the 
avowal sent the blood pounding at Blythe’s tem- 
ples. 

“Then do you suppose, Louise,” he said to her, 
in a vibrant voice of enthrallment, “that anything 
in this world of God can ever keep us apart? 
Everything gives way— must give way — to the 
love of a man for a woman, of a woman for a 
man. You speak of my ambition, my career. 
What would they be worth to me without you? 
Vain things — things that I would thrust away from 
me ! I tell you it has come to pass that my life is 
inseparably bound up in yours. All the rest would 
be a futile striving without you. The great mir- 
acle of life has come upon me. There was a time 
when I feared that it would pass me by. You are 
the woman of all my dreams — the dreams of boy 
and man. How can anything stand between us?” 

“I have thought that, too, often,” said Louise, 


338 


THE EDDY 


no less moved by his fervor than he had been by 
her avowal. “But the thought that I might be the 
means of throwing a shadow upon your path — ” 
“Shadow!’’ broke out Blythe. “There would 
be no path for me without you !” 

“But, dear,” said Louise, conscious that her 
ground was giving way beneath her, “we cannot 
always do that which we want to do, can we? We 
owe each other unselfishness at least, if only on 
account of our love ? And if you were to be swept 
by a regret in the time that is to come, how — ” 
“Don’t say that, Louise,” said Blythe. “It is 
too impossible. It is too inconceivable.” 

They came to a pause in their stroll and stood, 
hands on rail, gazing over the billowing expanse 
of sun-sparkling sea. 

“You will give me time to think it all out, dear, 
won’t you?” said Louise. “My experience has 
been so small that I do not often presume to feel 
very sure of my ground.” 

“When you speak of how small your experi- 
ence has been, Louise,” said Blythe, a symptom of 
a smile flickering around his eyes, “I am revisited 
by a kind of self-condemnation that I have known 
ever since I became aware that I loved you. Even 
now I wonder if I am really guilty of having 
pounced upon you, when you were barely out of 
school, and before you had your rightful chance 
to enslave and then appraise your cluster of 
suitors — ” 


THE EDDY 


339 


Louise, smiling, placed a hand upon his arm. 

‘‘Please don’t continue that,” she said. “All 
the ‘clusters of suitors’ in the world would have 
made no difference to me. Always, I think, John, 
I should have been gazing beyond them — if they 
had appeared, which of course is merely your 
polite assumption — to see your face. And then 
the poor ‘enslaved’ ones would have disappeared 
in a sudden mist, and I should have seen only you.” 

Hands resting upon steamer rails may be fur- 
tively pressed, no matter how many deck strollers 
there may be. 

“How royally you grant absolution!” said 
Blythe. “But, for all that, it is not as a sister 
confessor alone that I need you. If now you have 
made the path so clear for me, then it is your 
own fault, heart of dreams. It is as wife, mate of 
me, that I need you — and shall have you.” 

Wife and mate of the man beloved ! They were 
new words — even expressing a new thought — to 
Louise, and they sang tumultuously in her heart. 

Mrs. Treharne, very white and with the spirit- 
ual delicacy of an illness already far-advanced 
upon her features, was propped up in bed, gazing 
with a sort of vacant wonderment at her almost 
transparent hands, which she held up to the light, 
when the faithful Heloise entered the room with 
Louise’s wireless message from the Mauretania. 
She read it eagerly and then suffered the message 


340 


THE EDDY 


to flutter from her Angers to the coverlet. 

“My little girl will be here day after tomorrow 
morning,” she said to the maid, smiling wanly 
with the happiness of it. “Do you think she will 
know her mother, Heloise?” 

“Know you, madame?” said the maid, half 
grumblingly, half soothingly, as she raised her 
mistress and patted the pillows. “Madame must 
not be morbid. The doctor said that. I, too, say 
it. Why should not Mademoiselle Louise know 
her mother?” 

“Because, good Heloise, her mother is a spec- 
tre, a wraith, a lingering ghost,” said Mrs. Tre- 
harne, taking the maid’s hand in both her own 
and patting it; whereupon Heloise promptly pro- 
duced a handkerchief from the pocket of her tiny 
apron with her free hand and began to dab at her 
eyes. The mistress studied the maid with sur- 
prise. “Why, Heloise, I did not know you cared 
so much,” she said. “But I have noticed that you 
do not scold me any more. That is because you 
do care, then, Heloise?” 

“Madame does not need to be scolded any 
more,” said Heloise, brokenly. “Before, one was 
obliged to scold her; that is, one thought so.” 
The girl turned away her face and gazed blankly 
out of the window at the swaying trees. “But 
now, madame, one is sorry ever to have scolded 
at all.” 

They occupied a pretty hotel cottage on the 


THE EDDY 


341 


outskirts of the bright little town of Saranac in 
the Adirondacks. It is a town transiently inhabi- 
ted mainly by victims of pulmonary affections. 
But Mrs. Treharne’s illness was not of that char- 
acter. She had been obliged to take to bed a few 
days after reaching Saranac. Her medical men 
had told her that she was suffering from a gradual 
disintegration of the vital forces. 

“I quite understood that before I came here,” 
Mrs. Treharne had said to them. “You express 
in terms of politeness a fact that I have been per- 
fectly familiar with for a long time: that I am 
simply worn out. There are reasons, aside from 
any consideration of myself, why I should like to 
have you gentlemen inform me as to one point at 
once.” 

“And that is?” the physicians had asked her. 

“Am I to get well, or am I to die?” Mrs. Tre- 
harne had asked them out of hand. 

Very naturally the medical men had paused 
under the impact of so unusually direct a question. 
Then they had begun to tell her that her case pre- 
sented certain complications of a somewhat grave 
character, and that — 

“I understand,” Mrs. Treharne had inter- 
rupted, smiling up at them with a bravery which 
the physicians later commented upon glowingly. 
But they had not sought to disabuse her of the 
inference which their halting words and manner 
had caused her to derive. 


342 


THE EDDY 


Mrs. Treharne had turned the matter over in 
her mind for days before cabling to Louise. Be- 
fore sending that message she had, in her perplex- 
ity, turned to her maid for advice. 

“Heloise,” she had said to the devoted French 
girl, “tell me something, won’t you? The doctors 
have given me to understand that — oh, well, that 
I am not to be here very long. Do you think it 
would be well for me to send for my daughter?” 

Heloise, thus hearing of the physicians’ pro- 
nouncement for the first time, had given way to a 
torrent of tears; but, upon becoming calm under 
her mistress’s cheerful words, she had replied that 
it would be an everlasting pity if Louise were not 
sent for in any case. 

“I am not so sure about that,” Mrs. Treharne 
had replied. “I recall very easily how I myself, 
when I was of Louise’s age, recoiled from the 
thought of death — though I do not at all now, 
oddly enough. I should have hated to be at the 
bedside of my mother when she died — I was only 
a child in arms and did not know anything about 
it. Louise, I think, must feel the same way. Why 
should she not? She is my daughter. Would it 
not be quite as well for her to return to this coun- 
try and find me gone, as it would be to send for 
her now and subject her to the distress of seeing 
me pass? I am not considering myself, Heloise. 
Every minute I am longing to see her. But I want 
to be fair now, at least, and do what is best.” 


THE EDDY 


343 


Heloise had found no difficulty at all in with- 
standing this sort of reasoning. 

“If madame does not send for her daughter,” 
Heloise had replied, “I myself shall do so, in my 
own name.” 

“Very well,” Mrs. Treharne had replied, “I 
shall cable her at once, and God speed her over 
the sea to me!” 

On the second morning — sunny and beautiful 
— after Mrs. Treharne had received Louise’s wire- 
less message, she and Heloise heard the grinding 
of carriage wheels on the short gravel road lead- 
ing to the cottage porch. The doctor already had 
paid his visit and departed, so they knew that the 
sound was not that of his buggy. Heloise raced 
on tiptoes to the window and looked down. Then 
she turned a delighted face upon her mistress, 
whose hair she had been arranging with unusual 
care in expectation of Louise. 

“It is mademoiselle !” cried the maid. 

There was a sound of hurried tripping up the 
stairs; and Louise, flushed from the drive, regally 
beautiful, swept softly into the room and, kneeling 
by the bed, took her mother in her arms and held 
her tight, rocking back and forth on the pillows, 
and restraining her tears by sheer effort of will. 
Laura found an excuse to remain on the porch for 
a moment, giving directions to the driver of the 
carriage, while mother and daughter met. 


344 


THE EDDY 


Louise had schooled herself to withstand the 
shock of finding her mother looking badly. But 
her first glance at the white-faced invalid had 
caused her heart to beat with agonized trepidation. 
It would have been obvious to an uninterested 
stranger that Mrs. Treharne was fast approach- 
ing the end of her days. Louise perceived it at a 
glance. But she would not yield to her almost 
overwhelming woman’s impulse to weep. Her 
mother’s penetrating mind quickly sensed the 
girl’s struggle and the victory; and she raised 
Louise’s head from where it nestled on her shoul- 
der and held her face in her hands and looked at 
her with a smile. 

“It is fine of you not to cry, dear,” she said, 
stroking the girl’s face. “It means a good deal to 
me to know that my daughter is a thoroughbred 
— and you are always that, sweetheart. And how 
superb you have become ! What a commotion you 
and Laura must have made in London! Where 
is Laura — she is with you, of course?” 

“Here I am, Tony dear, as unlosable as the 
proverbial bad penny,” said Laura, entering the 
room just then and bending over from the other 
side of the bed and taking her old friend in her 
arms. “Isn’t Louise looking superb? I can say 
it before her, because the child hasn’t a groat’s 
worth of vanity. And she has behaved extraordi- 
narily well. I haven’t had to tie her to the bed- 
post once.” 


THE EDDY 


345 


“You are looking dazzling yourself, Laura,” 
said Mrs. Treharne with a little sigh. “Did you 
know that I always was just a little jealous of you, 
dear?” and she laughed more merrily than she 
had for a long time. “Not that I ever had any 
reason to be, for it was the design of Providence 
that you should outshine me. You and Louise are 
to spend hours with me, are you not, telling me 
of your conquests in Europe? And where is John 
Blythe ?” turning to Louise. “Is he not with you ? 
I judged from your wireless message that — ” 

“Oh, yes, he returned with us on the steamer, 
but he remained in New York, mother,” Louise 
put in, a quick flush overspreading her features. 
“Did you wish to see him? I know he would 
come if I were to — ” 

Mrs. Treharne glanced, smiling, at Laura, who 
returned the smile. 

“Would he, dear?” asked Mrs. Treharne. “I 
haven’t the least doubt of it. But there will be 
time. Later I should like to see him. He has 
a compelling way.” She paused, then added with 
a smile at Louise: “But he is very lucky, all the 
same.” 

Louise, marveling at her mother’s penetration in 
discerning, with so little to go upon, the bond 
between Blythe and herself, nevertheless was glad 
that the relationship had thus been read; for there 
still remained enough of her habitual shyness with 
her mother to have caused her to shrink slightly 


346 


THE EDDY 


from making even so natural and simple a reve- 
lation. 

Laura left the room presently to attend to the 
disposal of the arriving baggage, and Louise, re- 
moving her hat and travelling wrap, arranged her 
mother’s pillows and then sat beside her on the 
bed. 

‘‘I do not ask you, you see, dear, to try to con- 
ceal the fact that you find me so greatly altered,” 
said her mother, holding the girl’s hand. “I am 
ashamed to recall how petulant it used to make me 
when you seemed to be tracing, with your big, wide 
eyes, my new wrinkles — which you were not doing 
at all; I know that now, dear heart.” 

“When does your doctor come today, mother?” 
asked Louise, a little haltingly. 

“He has been here and gone,” replied her 
mother, discerning what was in Louise’s mind. 
“But there is no need for you to see him privately, 
daughter. Your little mother will tell you, for 
you have shown how brave you can be. I am 
quite as ill as you suppose me to be, Louise, and 
entirely beyond the help of medical men. Cry, 
dear, if you feel like it; I shall not mind; and there 
are times when tears do help one.” 

Louise, yielding at last, knelt beside the bed 
and buried her face on her mother’s shoulder in 
an agony of quiet weeping, while her mother 
stroked her hair and murmured phrases of en- 


THE EDDY 


347 


dearment that had not visited her lips since Louise 
had been a child. 

“Take heart, girl of mine,” she said after a 
while, when she observed that Louise’s sobs were 
gradually abating. “I am resigned. It was to 
be — but I shall not distract you with phrases of 
that kind, which, after all, are not so consoling as 
they are supposed to be. I am glad that I have 
lived to know and to understand and to appreciate 
so fine and sweet a daughter as I have. And, 
Louise : listen.” 

“Yes, mother: I am listening.” 

“It is a gift of God, I know, that I have a 
daughter who, when my very soul was in peril, 
regenerated, recreated me. You have done that 
for me. I confess it without shame. My little girl 
summoned me, raised me from the depths. Thank 
God I answered the summons before I knew that 
my life was slipping away from me, so that I am 
at least open to no charge of hypocrisy or of re- 
penting in mere grovelling fear of the judgment. 
My little Louise, grown to sweet, serene, pure 
womanhood, did this thing for me. It is some- 
thing to have brought your mother to the foot of 
the Cross, my dear; and that knowledge, I know, 
will ennoble and exalt you during all the years 
that are to come.” 

When Heloise entered the room, hours later, 
she found her mistress asleep, and Louise’s head 
still pillowed upon her mother’s breast. 


CHAPTER XVI 


TALL, bronzed man, erect and broad of 



shoulder, strode slowly, meditatively, 


hands clasped behind him, back and forth 
on the wide porch of a rambling, palm-shaded one- 
story Hawaiian bungalow. He had the unlined 
countenance of a man of forty-five who had lived 
most of his life in the open; but his silvered, al- 
most white, hair and mustache, might well have 
given at first glance, the impression that he was 


older. 


He was clad in white linen, although it was the 
day before Christmas. December in Hawaii! 
There is nothing in the whole world to compare 
with it. The sun shone in serene splendor from a 
cloudless sky of the intensest indigo. The fronds 
of the towering palms stirred with a soothing sib- 
ilance under the light touch of fragrant whisper- 
ing zephyrs. Surrounding the bungalow were 
many unfenced acres rioting in the myriad hued 
flowers of the tropics; thence, from where the wel- 
ter of blossoms ceased, on all sides, as far as the 
eye could see, stretched miles of sugar-cane in 
growing, with its unmatchable tint of young, ten- 
der yet vivid green. It was the Island of Maui; 
and Maui, next to the main Island of Hawaii, is 
the most beautiful of all the sugar-cane islands in 
the world. 

In the still air the chattering of hundreds of 


THE EDDY 


349 


Japanese workers among the cane reached, miti- 
gated by distance, the porch of the bungalow, at- 
tached to one of the stanchions of which was a 
telephone at which the bronzed man occasionally 
stopped to reply to the questions of foremen scat- 
tered over the plantation. From the rear came 
the softer tones of the Kanaka household servants; 
at intervals the voices were raised in fragments of 
the melodious but curiously melancholy Hawaiian 
folk songs. 

But George Treharne, accustomed to the beauty 
of his surroundings, was giving little heed, as he 
paced unceasingly back and forth, to the sights 
and sounds of his marvelous investiture. His mind 
was upon the snowy Christmas Eves of the flown 
years. He had not heard from his daughter, nor 
even from Blythe, a punctilious correspondent in 
matters of business, since receiving Louise’s an- 
nouncement of her mother’s death, in the early 
part of September. And he had been unable to 
make his contemplated visit to “the main land,” as 
Americans living in Hawaii call the United States. 

After one born and reared in temperate zones 
has passed many Christmases in tropic lands, the 
approach of that memory-hallowed day never fails 
to arouse longing for the keen bite of the cutting, 
North wind, the sight of drifting snow, the sound 
of sleigh-bells, the holiday activities of the icy 
Winter lands; nor does the flowery, fragrant 
beauty of the tropics, after long familiarity, com- 
pensate the native of the Winter-knowing lands 
for his severance from the holiday spirit to which 
his youth made him accustomed. 


350 


THE EDDY 


George Treharne was more lonesome on this 
day before Christmas than he had ever been in 
his life. He came to a pause in his stride, 
stopped by the telephone and began to devise the 
terms of a Christmas greeting by cable to Louise. 
He could telephone the message to Lahaina, the 
nearby seaport of the Island of Maui, whence it 
could be transmitted by telephone to Honolulu for 
the cable. 

He was taking down the receiver, when he hap- 
pened to glance down the long white road to the 
entrance gate, nearly three-quarters of a mile 
away. In the clear air he could discern that the 
horse trotting up the road was ridden by a woman. 
Many tourists visited the Treharne plantation and 
were received with solicitous hospitality by its 
owner in person. Knowing that this presumable 
tourist would reach the bungalow before he could 
finish his message to Lahaina, George Treharne 
deferred taking down the receiver of the tele- 
phone. He resumed his strolling back and forth 
on the porch, and, when horse and rider were 
within a hundred yards or so of the bungalow, he 
summoned a Kanaka boy to take charge of the 
horse. He himself descended the steps and went 
to the edge of the road, where, with bared head, 
he waited to assist the visitor from her horse. 

The sunlight was blindingly in his eyes, so that 
he scarcely saw her face when he lifted her from 
the saddle. After a few words of courteous greet- 
ing he led the way, his vision still slightly obscured 
by the after-effects of the sun’s direct rays, to the 
wide palrmshaded porch. 


THE EDDY 


351 


When she stood beside him on the porch, rather 
nervously switching her riding crop, he observed 
that she was a very lovely, unusually tall young 
woman with a great coil of auburn hair flowing 
from beneath her wide-brimmed soft hat; and he 
had noticed, too, when she spoke, that she pos- 
sessed a singularly sweet, rather subdued voice. 

But he did not know her. 

He was about to conduct her through the open 
door into the long, cool hall, when, turning his 
head to speak to her, he was struck by something 
in her face and attitude. She was not following 
him. That was what he noticed at once. Instead, 
she was standing quite still in the middle of the 
porch, her riding crop now at rest, and holding 
up the skirt of her habit with the other hand. 
There was a half-smile on her face; but, in odd 
contrast to this, he noticed that her eyes were 
filmed with tears; that, in truth, two tears at least 
already had fallen. 

Halting, then, in the doorway, he turned full 
around upon her. A tremor ran through his 
frame. He reachel her in two bounds which 
were as sudden and springy as the bounds of a 
wrestler. 

He crushed her to his heart without a word. 
He knew that he was incapable of speaking. He 
kissed her over and over again and devoured her 
with his eyes. 

“My little girl Louise !” he was finally able to 
say in a broken voice. “My beautiful, woman- 
grown little girl — God forever bless her !” and he 
held her out at arm’s length, his powerful, bronzed 


352 


THE EDDY 


hands gripping her shoulders, and gazed avidly at 
her until once again he clasped her to his heart. 

* * * * * * * 

After a time, when father and daughter were 
able to speak collectedly, Louise walked over to 
the railing of the porch and raised her riding crop 
high in the air. Her father saw the signal. The 
man for whom it was intended saw it as quickly. 
Instantly, from behind the superintendent’s house 
at the gate of the plantation road, a horse, ridden 
by a man in khaki, emerged and quickly swung 
into a gallop, making for the bungalow. 

When John Blythe, with his wide smile, leaped 
from the horse and tossed the reins to the waiting 
Kanaka boy, George Treharne, recognizing him 
at once, glanced wonderingly from his face to the 
smiling, flushed face of Louise. Then his own 
bronzed features were creased by a smile of 
warmth and happiness. 

“Then I have a son, too, Louise?” he asked his 
daughter. 

But he knew how needless her brightly nodded 
answer was when, an instant later, he saw her 
clasped in her husband’s arms. 


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